Hello, it's me.
I was wondering if after all these months you'd like to read
the next chapter of this tale... and... blabla blabla bla... Yeah... I tried.
So, against all the odds, I present you this short update for this lil' story of mine.
This chapter was born simply because some people somewhere gave me motivation, new ideas and encouraged my lazy perfectionist butt to continue. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Chapter two: Everything's going to be alright… or... alleft.
The little girl laid on her back and groaned.
She opened her eyes ever so slightly and saw some dim light coming from somewhere far above her. Then she closed her eyes again. She could hear the sound of water dripping down to the ground from her right side and how it echoed around the walls, but other than that, it was silent.
She was hurt. Her head felt too heavy and she couldn't really focus on anything far longer than a second or two.
The feeling wasn't new, she remembered it from somewhere, but she couldn't quite recall where or when. She was also too tired to try to remember such things at the moment.
She had problems remembering even some much more recent events… like why she was lying on a… on a... wait… where was she lying?
The girl forced her eyes open once more and she turned her head slowly to the left. The motion was a bit painful, but she ignored it and saw something golden from the corner of her eye. It took her a moment to understand that she was surrounded by beautiful yellow flowers and that she had actually fallen right in the middle of a flowerbed.
The flowers were pretty, but more importantly they had softened her fall and prevented much more serious injuries she might have gotten if she had just fallen to the cold hard ground. For some strange reason the flowers seemed to be huge.
They smelled nice too, and the girl stayed there for a while. She wondered how nice it would be to drift asleep where she was, almost like a princess…
But then the cold reality hit her. She remembered why she was there.
The girl jolted up and winced, her head pounded and moving her right hand… or was it left… it hurt. She looked at the hand that was hurting and after lifting the sleeve of her striped blue shirt, she saw that it was quite bruised and had some cuts covering it. She thought hard for a moment and then looked at her other hand. It had a bruise or two too, but otherwise it was alright… or... alleft… The girl frowned but then shrugged.. and winced once again. She really shouldn't move her righ-, lef-... she shouldn't move her hand.
She didn't really remember which hand was which, and even though she thought it to be slightly embarrassing, she decided that she'd need to focus on the issue some other time. For now she had to find out where she was and where her brother had gone. She would need to hurry, her brother had been missing for a week after all, and if he truly was inside the mountain he could be hungry... or scared... o-or in trouble!
Well… no, perhaps not. There was no way he would be scared and he was way too smart to get into any kind of trouble, right? But… better be safe than sorry. Even if he was never afraid of anything, he could still need her help. She could save him… she could be the hero… and maybe then her brother would finally… he would… oh... well. It didn't matter right now. She could daydream later, now she had a job to do.
Slowly, and with some effort, the girl rose up from the ground and looked at the flowers. On the spot she had landed on, the flowers had bent to the ground and some of them had downright snapped. The girl felt bad about landing on them, but she couldn't really help the matter.
The girl also noticed that her bag hadn't dropped too far from where she had fallen, which she was glad about. She could faintly remember how she had fallen.
It had happened while she'd been looking through her backpack to see if there was anything edible in there. Then… she had tripped on something... Yes, that's right. It had been dark, too dark, and balancing her backpack on her front side while walking and holding a flashlight hadn't been easy. Now she regretted that she hadn't just put the bag on the ground and stopped for a moment.
The girl also remembered the feeling of falling. It had been as if she'd been completely weightless, and… well, after that short period of wonder and amazement, it had been just chaos and stone walls everywhere she looked. In the end she had decided to close her eyes.
Her memory of the incident was rather blurry and painful to say at least.
The girl walked to her green backpack and lifted it from the ground with her better hand.
She looked quickly through it and found some bandages that she carelessly wrapped around her arm, but when her eyes caught a glimpse of her piggy flashlight on the other side of the cave, she let out a sad whimper and ran to it.
The glass on the pink flashlight had cracked and when the girl tried to turn it on, there was only a small flicker of light before the shine on the piggy's nose died out completely. Disappointed, the girl stared at her precious flashlight and then walked slowly next to the flowerbed. She put Mr. Nosy on the ground and said her silent farewells to him.
Maybe it was just fair. She had hurt the flowers when she fell, and even if it wasn't much of a way to say she was sorry, giving away something as useful as Mr. Nosy -nevermind the fact that he was a bit broken- really meant something.
How did it go again..? Eye for a… tooth? Or was it a leg? She didn't remember, nor did she actually want to think about it. She had always thought that the saying sounded a little... odd.
She couldn't recall where she had heard it, but it sounded like something one could say in a situation like this.
The girl checked her bag for food but it was just as hopeless as before. She hadn't packed anything edible in there when she had left, and no food had magically appeared in her bag while she had been unconscious.
It was quite unfortunate.
After the disappointment, the girl moved her gaze towards the path before her.
The corridor was dark but it didn't seem to be very long, so after a short while of gathering courage, she decided to check what the place she had fallen into had to offer.
After walking through the gate the girl entered another room. It was completely dark, except for the small area in the center of the place.
The whole room seemed to be empty and the girl looked cautiously around her. When she didn't see anything threatening lurking in the shadows she took couple small steps forward. Then she stopped.
It was as if someone would have pushed a button inside her head, so suddenly her imagination decided to start its work.
Snakes, spiders, ghosts, angry beasts with sharp teeth...
What kind of monsters could jump on her while she wasn't looking?
A small whimper escaped from the little girl and she tried to calm down.
Brave, brave, brave, brave, I can be brave, I am very brave, bravest of bravery bravers who are very... brave…, she chanted in her mind and made up a couple very brave-sounding words in her head.
She had to do this for her brother... and, she still had that angel with her, didn't she? If angels still followed clumsy people who fell into stupid holes and didn't look where they were going, that is. No, the angel had to be with her. Slightly clumsy people were those who especially needed protecting, after all! Surely they weren't guardian angels for nothing.
The girl kept her gaze warily in the shadows and walked forward, closer to the light, but then, when she turned her gaze in front of her her again, she let out a horrified scream.
The strange creature in front of her winced and its face twisted into a nasty grimace.
"What the-?", it muttered and that made the girl let out even more horrified cry.
She couldn't move, she stared at the golden flower and shook from fear.
Flowers weren't supposed to talk! They weren't supposed to have faces either! Oh, no-no-no-no… What if it was angry because she had landed on its siblings? W-what if it wanted revenge?! B-but she had even left to the flowers!
The whole room was completely silent as they both stared at each other, the girl with fear, awaiting what the flower would do, and the other with disbelief.
But then the flower's grimace turned into a frown... and the frown changed into a small smile… and after that, the corners of its mouth raised even more, forming a sickly sweet smile onto the flower's face.
The girl looked at it, confused, and what happened next left her even more baffled.
Suddenly the flower let out a small, high pitched giggle and after a moment its giggles grew louder.
Soon it was laughing almost hysterically.
The girl couldn't do anything but stare and when the flower finally talked again it didn't help her unease at all.
"So… this is what you've become?! This- this is just hilarious!", it said and laughed, staring at her.
"Look at you, you're so… so ... C!"
The small flower's voice had suddenly changed into a deafeningly high but at the same time low and dark voice that made the girl shudder with fear.
The flower kept laughing. For a short moment it's sweet smile turned into a slightly threatening one.
"What do-?", the girl timidly started but her attempt to speak was cut out shortly by the golden flower.
"Really?! After all the things you accomplished, you just… Oh wow... " Another set of sharp giggles made the flower unable to continue.
Soon after that the flower's laughs finally decreased and it fell silent, however, it's wide grin still remained.
"You know what? Do what you will.", it said to her and smirked "... but remember, I will be waiting for you!", the flower snickered and then vanished into the ground below it.
"...yOu wilL LoVE LiViNg In tHeRe…"
Until next time, folks! Leave a comment if you feel like it and tell me what you think. I wouldn't mind getting inside that pretty head of yours!
(Yeah, yeah... flattery ain't gonna get me anywhere, I know... but well, I gonna try anyway, sugar.)
Ps. If you've done the the devil's work but decided that you aren't made for that road (or someone kept you from it) you may have some idea what is going on in here. That also means you came back to see what changed... and it turns out that some of them kNoW-wHaT-YoU-dId...