(Untitled)

[uquars_gadget]

(from here)

It is morning, and Helen is pulled awake in the cushion room by the twisting-tugging of the traverse pulling at her. The light says it is early, but she and Jamie are already flinging themselves at the door.

Comments

[uquars_gadget]

"What do we do?" Helen asks, on the verge of panic and too tired to try and hide it. "What happens if we don't get to the Boundary?"

[walksthebounds]

The twisting tug is too strong for Jamie to come up with any kind of sensible answer; he shakes the door again instead.

"I don't know! I told you I've never been in a fix like this before!"

[uquars_gadget]

"And it's all you fault," Helen says, attitude turned even nastier by pull, and goes to sit down in the corner.

She wraps her arms around her legs after a moment, and tries to close her eyes and ignore the pain (but all of the meditations she knows agains pain focus on Uquar, and she is not going to ask him for help, so she tries to remember her physics texts instead).

[walksthebounds]

It's probably the sensible thing to do - Jamie can't think of anything much better to do, at least - but all the same he can't sit down; he tries, and it pulls him right back him. He compromises by leaning on the door, feeling the call drag at him.

It comes to him dismally that not all the gnawing in his stomach is the call of the Bounds. He's starving hungry, too, despite all he ate last night - or maybe because of; it works like that, sometimes, the more you eat, the hungrier you get the next morning. Regardless, the state he is in is not a happy one.

It lasts for what must be two hours, too, before the door opens underneath him and he topples out straight into the pale hands of the villagers.