#look guys idk yes I'm just posting random stuff that I wrote 3 months ago and didn't even proofread back then either

[daisywords]

starlight excerpt

aka I think this scene’s gonna have to go based on plot changes so here y’all go enjoy

And so I take a breath, already noting the taste of the air like it’s my last, and dip my head into the water.

I open my eyes, but there’s no point. It’s blacker than the inside of my eyelids. So I close my eyes against the sting of salt and push myself along the wall.

This isn’t fast enough. I can’t hold my breath for very long.

I kick off the ground, letting my back bump against the tunnel’s roof as my body turns horizontal.

Even strokes, strong kicks. I can do this.

Stroke.

Stroke.

The tunnel seems to be just getting smaller, and the pressure of saving the breath in my lungs is indistinguishable from panic.

Stroke.

My knuckles scrape rock. The cave floor has come up to meet me. And then my hands hit rock when they reach in front of me for the next stroke.  

My knees hit ground, and I’m scrabbling, scrambling at the rock in front of me, because it can’t be a dead end, it can’t.

And then I lose balance as the rock underneath my right knee disappears.

I let out a string of bubbles in surprise. Half the air in my lungs.

There it is, the hole. Or a hole. Big enough for my knee to fall through and then some. My hands explore the edges of it, trying to gauge size.

It’ll be a tight fit, if I fit at all.

Should I go back?

I’m wasting breath, wasting time, thinking.

I stick my hands through the hole, my head, forcing my shoulders through, pushing with my elbows, letting a jagged edge gouge a long line down my back. My hips stick resolutely, and I will die here, I will die here. The need to breathe hurts me worse than any insult from the unforgiving stone, and I will die here, halfway through this hole.

I should have gone back.

I wonder if Eli will ever find me, my drowned upper half moving languidly with the current, so very very close to him.

So very very close, and no, no. I brace my elbows hard against the walls enclosing me, and it’s all hot white pain and I’m through, I’m through and scrabbling up a shallow incline until the walls around me stop knocking on my elbows and my head breaks the surface.

Air. Ah.

Relief.

After the urge to take breaths bigger than my lungs will allow passes, I crawl up until I’m out of the water. I reach up for the ceiling, but I can’t find it. Or any walls. Just me and the edge of the water, sitting next to each other on this slope.

It’s absolutely black. The air tastes like blood, like iron, probably, all cold in my chest. And I’m all shiver and ache and sting, all dipped in saltwater as I bleed lightly in dozens of places. And irreparably broken in some places, my back, my ribs, my hips, oh, my hips.

I twist to try to look around at my back, and doing so makes it worse, worse, and I grit my teeth and it’s pointless anyway, because I can’t even see anything, it’s so black.

I wave my hand in front of my face, and for a moment it seems like I can see it, a moving shadow, but no, no, just a trick of the light.

A trick of the dark, rather.

I stand, with my hands raised so I don’t hit my head, but there is only more dark to greet me.

I hurt in more ways than I can think about. But I can walk, I think.

I start up the incline. It’s good that the ground isn’t flat, else I’d certainly be completely lost in here. But I have one direction, which is vaguely up. No, two. Upways, and waterways. Forward, and backward. Eliward, and outward.

“Eli?” I say, and his name echoes through the dark.

My next step makes me stumble and fall, and what kind of idiot was I, thinking to just walk up a slant of uneven stone here in the perfect dark, as if I was walking down a boulevard?

So here I am, half climbing half crawling, upon my already beaten knees. Some savior am I, but here I am, at least. At last.

“Eli?”

And the echo sounds very much like it’s coming from a cave that is perfectly, perfectly empty.

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