MUMMY MONSTER… YOU EXPECTED SOMEONE ELSE?
When Toriel had finished bandaging Frisk's wounds, she led her back into the living room, and sat her down at a table. She disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a plate and an orange blob and a metal thing. The smell of cinnamon was mouthwatering, and soon Frisk was scarfing down the pie.
"This is beautiful." Frisk sighed in awe.
"You eat that, and meanwhile, I'll see what I can do about your glasses…" Toriel set to work while Frisk nibbled at her pie, still cautious about whether or not it would poison her or something, but Toriel was fixing her glasses… why would she hurt her if she were doing that? Frisk squinted to see Toriel holding the pieces in her right hand, while in her left she had some sort of blaring light baring down on them. Though Frisk couldn't tell whether or not she had any sort of tool… she hadn't seen her grab one.
"How… are you going to fix glass?"
Toriel laughed. "Oh, you'll see once you put your glasses on."
Frowning, Frisk nibbled on more cinnamon pie.
"Just a moment…" there was a crack, and she gasped, "Oh! Uhm… let me try that again… I've done this before… goodness, this is such a thick prescription… Uhm- don't watch, you might ruin your eyes worse."
Frisk turned away, picking at the carpet beneath her.
Moments later, Toriel gave an "Ah!" of triumph. "I think that's clear enough… yes, smooth as well… and now I can just… There!" something clicked into place, and Frisk spun around to look up at Toriel's blur, and the faint blue. Toriel was fanning the blue, and blowing at it; it was steaming. "It wouldn't be good to put them on right now; they are still quite hot.
"Oh…" Frisk sat back down, disappointed. She looked around, spying the blob on the platter that was evidently cinnamon pie. She began to wolf some of that down. I'm so hungry…
"So you read, Frisk?" Toriel said with a smile in her voice.
Frisk looked back at Toriel's blur. "Yeah…" she grinned. "I like to read a lot of fantasy… but I've recently gotten into researching the mysteries of the world because some of them are fantasy enough, and it's exciting that the world can have impossible things!"
"Don't you know everything is impossible?"
"What do you mean?"
"It's only impossible until you've experienced it."
Frisk was silent for a moment. "Huh. I did fall down a sort of rabbit hole," Frisk laughed. "But if I just suddenly find out I'm dreaming and I wake up…" she made a face. "I don't feel like I'm asleep though. I'm so aware of everything. And dream time feels quick and short. This is taking forever."
"Sorry about the glasses."
"Oh, I didn't mean that! I mean- uhm, the… pie is really good!" Frisk stuffed more pie into her face. "All… good things… come in good time?" Frisk made it sound like a question.
"Yes they do." There was a grin in Toriel's voice.
"So… uhm… why do you ask about me reading?"
"I… I think you will find a few books here you might like." Toriel held out a blue blur to her, and Frisk reached for the blue, and eagerly took the glasses that were held out to her, and slipped them over her nose, over her ears. Hesitantly, she looked up at Toriel, taking in the sight of the monstrous lioness in a purple dress. She was white furred, and almost even looked like a goat for the floppy ears, and some lines of her head. But her eyes, nose and mouth, hands, feet, and tail, and fur were especially fluffy and lion like.
Frisk just stared. "I thought monsters were supposed to be ugly," Frisk shook her head, "Humans have crazy imaginations, huh?"
"It goes for any who might fear what they do not understand, yes." Toriel smiled, and pointed to her left. Frisk followed the claw, and saw a massive book shelf filled to the brim with books. Frisk brightened, scooting forward, and scanning over the titles. She began sliding books out of the shelf, one after the other, sliding them back and glancing at the descriptions and titles. "Botany? This is a lot of survival stuff. Whoa… I've never seen these kinds of plants before…" she flipped through the pages, scanning, pausing, gawking at a few oddly spiked things. "Whoa that looks dangerous."
"Many things here truly are monstrous…" Toriel looked apologetic.
"I'll just make a note to avoid that," Frisk laughed. "Oh, is there anything on blue flowers in here?"
"Blue flowers?" Toriel leaned forward, tilting her head curiously.
"Yeah, there were some over the cavern I fell into… Well, it was like there was a mountain, and then a secret tunnel… weird thing is the tunnel in pictures was just a blank wall, but then when I saw it, it just opened up to this big circular cavern with water and blue flowers and this stair case and this crater hole in the middle which I got shoved into… uhm… the flowers seemed to be talking too…"
"Did the flowers push you?"
"Oh… no. I don't think so. This someone was pushing me and throwing me all the way up the mountain…" she shivered. "I don't know why they did…"
"The flowers are called echo flowers. They record voices and replay them."
"Like certain birds! Cool!"
"I've read about those… but what worries me Frisk is that someone knew where to take you and purposefully threw you down here."
Frisk sighed. "Yeah… Weird thing is, I couldn't see them. Ever. I would run right at them, well- where- after I'd get picked up and thrown… those marks on my shirt- that's where those came from."
"Those black marks?" Toriel frowned.
"Yep. They'd pick me up and throw me, and I'd run back where they'd thrown me from, there'd be absolutely no one standing there-" frisk paused and held up a hand, "I was wearing my glasses. The first way I noticed their presence, someone picked me up when I fell, but when I looked to see who held my hand, no one was there. And my book disappeared. And I couldn't hear them even though there were leaves everywhere."
Toriel nodded slowly, brows furrowed.
"Do you think it was someone from here?" Frisk asked cautiously.
Toriel shook her head. "That's strange… no one can…" her voice trailed off.
"No one can what?" Frisk looked confused.
Toriel was silent, but then looked at Frisk and her gaze softened. "Do you feel like they are still following you?"
"Uhm… I don't know… before I knew and saw I was alone, but it felt like I wasn't. But now I see you here, so I don't really know… But it's scary, cause I don't… well, I can't even see them." She slouched and looked down at the book on her lap. Her glasses slid down the bridge of her nose. "I don't know if they'll let me leave either… and that scares me more… Mrs. Lauren and dad are probably terrified… they don't know where I am, and… well, they knew I was in the park, and I'm sure there will be people looking for me but… tch… I hope those bullies get in trouble…" she began to mumble.
"I hope I don't scare you, Frisk…" Toriel was looking down at her hands when Frisk looked up at her.
"No… your hands are soft. This other person, whoever they were, they were really cold and… kinda… sharp. They weren't fluffy at all." She managed a chuckle. "You have claws, but you never cut me when you were helping me. And you made me pie, and I'm not dead yet, so…" Frisk shrugged. "Why would you heal me and then feed me and then fix my glasses? If you were any smart evil monster, you would have lured me into the oven before I could see and take advantage of that. But you didn't." she smiled.
Toriel smiled back. "Thank you, Frisk."
"But… you said you watched for other people who fell down here?"
Toriel nodded, as though waiting now for the question to hit. So she'd heard it before.
"Well… I don't see anyone… so… do you know a way back to the surface? I read that it happened once where someone from here went to the surface with a human, but its written that it only happened once…"
Toriel's face was downcast. "Excuse me… for a moment…" she stood, and her paws thudded across the floor.
Frisk watched her leave, and she looked at the book in her hand, thinking. Why had Toriel looked so sad? Curious, Frisk set the book back on the shelf, stood, and went to look for Toriel. She was nowhere to be seen. Across from here was a set of closed doors on the left, and a dead end with a mirror… various potted plants along the way- hey! She saw these in the book! Water sausages!
Quietly, Frisk wandered down the hall and tested some of the doors. There was a child's room. It looked very clean, and there were pictures of children in frames. And… a miniature Toriel. No, it was a little lion man. A lion man! Just like in the story she had read! That was so cool. She stared at the picture for a moment, and as she looked left and right at the beds, and the toys neatly put away, she began to wonder where they were… it seemed as though they had been here a while.
Turning, Frisk quietly left the room and checked the other ones. One was apparently Toriel's. She kept the rooms so clean! But there was a journal on her desk. Of all things… there were jokes in it. She looked away, feeling awkward for having spied. She went to the next room, but it was locked. She did however approach the mirror. She gawked at herself; there were bandages all over her, and it made her laugh. "I guess I really do look like a mummy."
All of a sudden the chill of cold hands brushed her arms, and she stopped laughing and stared at the mirror. The cold hands dug into her shoulders, and Frisk saw something above her reflection…
YOU EXPECTED TO SEE SOMEONE ELSE?
"Whoa!" she shook away from the cold hands and hurried back down the hallway, holding her arms. The cold tapped her left arm, and suddenly she was thrown back and hit a wall. She fell, seeing a guard rail soar up past her eyes, and she was falling through the floor! She tumbled and rolled and then caught herself on a ledge. Dizzily, she saw she had been tumbling down a flight of stairs. But everything was blurry… her glasses had been knocked off her face! Desperately, Frisk searched for them, squinting her eyes to get the slightest bit of detail or color, but just couldn't find them.
Another cold hand grabbed her leg and tossed it aside. She rolled more, caught herself, and hastily got to her feet, jumped down the rest of the stairs, and slammed into another wall. "I'm going!" she gasped as she stumbled away, scanning the ground for her glasses. "Stop doing that!" she detected blue frames on the last stair, grabbed for them, and backed away onto even ground. No more stairs.
Frisk tested her glasses to look over the stairs. She wilted in dismay. "Toriel just fixed these…" There was a long thin crack on the lenses again, messing up her vision. Even without seeing well, Frisk understood enough that she would not see the monster from the mirror.
Hesitating, Frisk curled her glasses into a fist. Shaking, she turned to face the long hallway, and squinted. It was so long and dimly lit that it narrowed into a wall of darkness. There was a dull breeze whispering past her ears and leaving a frigid sting in her fingers.
The icy fingers dug into Frisks' back as they shoved her forward a few steps. Frisk began to shuffle onward carefully and slow. Apparently shuffling wasn't fast enough for the cold handed phantom, however… and so, after Frisk felt claws scraping skin from her back, her legs found the motivation to charge into the dark at full speed.