By the Doorstep - Blackout
Title: Blackout
Fandom: Original (By the Doorstep)
Rating: PG
Summary: All you need to know is: a) I am writing this overall story in disorderly clips and phases, so this isn't how it begins; b) The main character, an intentionally unnamed female, at a certain point in her life discovered the ability to move between the veils of time and space to her heart's content, which she does mostly to pursue romanticallish encounters. This chunk takes place quite a deal later in the story (which hasn't been exactly recorded yet) when she becomes able to shift between dimensions as well. This is her first time being in another world, just waking up, and so we go from there.
Notes: Written using the prompts "Black Out" from tamingthemuse and the Eight of Swords from 78_tarot. My take on the card: She has used her abilities (Swords) to reach a new high in her practice, and her destination winds up being not so fine, so now she's caught, incapacitated, between a rock and a hard place by her own doing. She's bound and blinded, and in a desolate place, and needs help.
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This fold was an exhausting one. She was knocked out completely, and stirred into consciousness weakened, hungry, and craving ravioli in tomato sauce. There was something different this time, aside from having passed out. There was a change. She had already found the rips in the curtain between time and space in her own world, but now she had pried open the window into something unfamiliar.
Perhaps it was the transition shifting her blood that made her feet cold as blocks of ice, or perhaps it was the dankness of the new surroundings. In any case, the aching in her toes was enough to encourage her to force herself awake and move around. Wherever she had wound up in her aimless travelling, it was black, and the black was big. The sound of her movements, sitting up and adjusting her limbs, made a low, ugly echo on walls lost in darkness. The place was wet, and the left side of her body was damp with lying in water that smelled old and still.
"What next?" she asked herself with a sigh, as her stomach gurgled beneath her. She couldn't see hide nor hair of herself, so she had to rely on faith that her stomach and the rest of her parts were actually there. She felt around her body absently, not quite checking for injuries, and not quite warming herself, but an amount of both. She kept close to herself and moved little; a broader darkness is often more claustrophobic than a smaller one.
Her hands were shaky and her legs felt drained. She sat she knew not how long in her sleep-warmed puddle, staring and pondering vacantly in drowsy shock, fingers tucked under her armpits.
"What now?"
When the touch came at her shoulder, her skin nearly separated neatly from her flesh with the violent cringe of surprise that shuddered through her body.
"Fear not," a high voice in a low tone assured her. "I will take you where it is dry."
Arms wrapped around her shoulders and urged her to stand, and she did not object. The stranger kept his hand gripped firmly round her arm as he led her through the expanse of pitch, his body pressed close to hers, guiding her along the slippery, rocky floor of the cavern. Staring widely into the darkness while advancing into it made her dizzy and unsteady. She closed her eyes tight so they would not feel so blinded, and her disorientation was easier to manage. She could focus more easily on putting one foot in front of the other, the senses other than vision assuming dominance. The rubber soles of her shoes scraped and thudded dully as they walked, and her companion's sure, smooth steps made the occasional wet slap against the stone. His breath whistled above her ear, and he smelled faintly of sweat and swamp.
He was careful with her, and steadied the steps she could not see. They did not say anything as they moved; sound was strange in the dead air, and speech was disquieting. After any number of lost minutes of travelling thusly, the stranger took her wrist and led her hand to touch a rough wall. He led her through a nearby passage, and the air was closer; the change was comforting. The ground became grittier as they delved further into drier confines. He helped her to fit through narrow places where the walls of rock kissed, his hands holding and pressing her where she needed support, her hand, her waist, her calf.
They passed through one such gap, and her escort halted their tracks. He stepped away from her, breaking all physical contact and throwing off her balance, after having grown accustomed to there being a body to lean against. "Here we are." Her eyes could see no difference between this darkness and the darkness they had just come from, but she trusted his assertion. The place was comparatively warmer, and there were layers of smell more powerful than dirt and damp, food smells, living smells.
"You would like light," the stranger muttered thinly, and there was a nearby shuffle of movement as he begrudged to the task. There was a scrape, scrape, and then a light of flame, and her eyes blinked it in with stinging hunger. A torch was lit, and her vision adjusted to the presence of light, and she set first eyes upon her rescuer. It became certain she was no longer in her own plane of existence.