Jan 28 2021, 02:00 AM
Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:
references to gore, also a violent panic attackThis post contains potentially sensitive material:
In his last chrysalis, Tahi-shei had gone down calmly, and so he had slept calmly. But this time, he had dreamed.
Not often, of course. They'd been brief little flashes of consciousness, shards of forgotten memory, bits and pieces of nothing. Footprints in the snow. Pinprick eyes, sinister laughs. Red. Red, red, red. You are not alone here, Tahi-shei, have you ever been alone? Sleep. Shattered marble, foreign shapes -- the curve of lips in a frown, shards of horrible white, glass and ice and blood and fungus choking him with rot and decay -- Mother! MOTHER! something screamed, and he did not know who.
Sleep.
Giggle? Stone-on-skin, spots, fungus, rot rot rot-- melting things and oil and pinprick eyes and ice and that horrible, horrible laugh and-- and, bizarrely, bees. Huge, hulking bees -- monsters of fur and flesh and wing, filled with venom and hatred and biting, slashing, whirling teeth, blood and decay and rot and MOTHER--
Sleep. He was sleeping -- why was his sleep so troubled?
His last dreams before he woke were meaningless -- stars, endless stars. The first sight he ever saw, stretching high above him in Orion, and ametrine sitting in a ball of fire. Whatever could that have meant? Oh well. It's probably nothing.
...
He would never admit to it, not now or ever, but his first thought when he woke was VARGAS.
The ametrine chrysalis shattered around him. It spiderwebbed at first, like glass, making cracks along its facets, and then it split where he struck it and began to desperately try to wrench his way out. He stumbled into the bed of now-wet fungus, and recoiled. He knew what whitecaps felt like, of course -- he knew them, he recognized them. But he could not see them.
Panic clawed up his throat. He could not see. There was nothing -- not even black. Just a lack thereof. If he had been less panicked, less new, less scared, he might have been able to grasp at the barely-there dregs of his remaining eyesight -- something like fifteen percent or less, dwindling at zero-point-six-percent a day, until -- nil, nought, cipher, zero. But this felt like nothing.
He fought to his hooves and tripped over his chrysalis, his head spinning. He did not know which way was up, and he felt like he was drowning. His ears were ringing, and he was not even sure of the ground beneath his hooves. Wet and squishy and hard depending on where he stepped -- he could taste his own panic, filling the air with its sour tinge. Prey ready for the slaughter. Something seized at his heart, at the aching scar at his chest where stone sprung from, and it did not let go.
Tahi-shei could not breathe. He could not see. All he knew was terror.
It had been two weeks. A half-cycle. He knew this. He knew how long it took, for the body to tear itself apart and built itself back up again. I failed, didn't I? he thought, hysterical laughter bubbling out between panicked breaths -- if anyone was speaking to him, he couldn't hear them. If anyone touched him, he would recoil or thrash. He could see it now, hear it, feel the phantom blood -- Mother, rot, decay. Vargas's disapproval. The weight of blood upon his shoulders and--
He collapsed into the rubble of his chrysalis, shaking like a leaf and desperately trying to catch his breath. Hysterical, half-choked sobs, and a single, desperate whisper between horrid breaths into the abyss of nothing -- "Help."
@james
(that whole episode probably took about 45 seconds to a minute and a half, by the way)