Underground Sea Far Away in Another Dark Place

For @Avery
Midday - Patchy moderate snow - 27 ° F, -3 ° C

The snow fell lazy around him, grey clouds covering the sky above. He still didn't have any luck with finding Neha or the pack she had spoken about, and a part of him was starting to regret his idea of migrating to the mountains for the winter. It seemed like a good idea a the time. No spooky mist to send him for a loop, and so far - no crazy wolves. But only if he didn't count Victoria. And he didn't see a mountain lion once! He also didn't eat for a while, but he drew his mind away from that train of thought. If he didn't think about it, it was like it wasn't even real.

He shuffled along, head pointed down and ears perked. There was running water below him, he could hear it beneath his paws under the ground. But he had yet to find the actual source yet, or any sign of what cavern might lurk below. And - woah.

He gave a panicked huff when he suddenly found it, gazing down into darkness and faded shades of blue. For a second his fore paws threatened to slip over the edge, and he was quick to shuffle back. Because falling into a random hole in the mountains was not on his list of unfortunate events to happen. He really wasn't ready to add that to his list of weird, bad luck-inspired events.

And so he stepped back, head cocked as he squinted into the darkness below. The very impulsive, not that bright part of him said jump down now. The rest of him, the part of himself he listened to, said otherwise. He looked up, yellow eyes scanning the area around him. He looked back down and leaned over, suddenly giddy. And he pushed a clump of powdery snow down, along with whatever rocks got caught up in the action. His tail wagged and he hunkered down, slouching over the gap with his ears straining. There had to be some kind of noise, right?

(This post was last modified: Nov 07, 2016, 02:55 AM by Cottongrass.)

Avery had woken up that night to a chill wind blowing against him through the empty space at his side. When in the night Victoria had left, it was hard to tell, though the falling white flakes had yet to entirely cover up the indent her sleeping body had left behind in the snow, nor her prints snaking towards the mountains. He begrudgingly followed her trail, stifling annoyance that she'd not only gone ahead without him, but gone into the <i>mountains</i> of all places. It wasn't entirely surprising, she had mentioned the day before that they might get a better view up there, but he thought it was a foolish idea anyways. Mountains were the domain of rugged goats and ruthless cougars, not a pair of wayward wolves. 

Nonetheless, he found himself scaling the rocky heights as the sun rose over him. It wasn't as easy to follow his sister's trail up here; she was a bit more sturdy and a lot more daring, where she took the high-road, Avery had no choice but to take the low one. This lead him into a snaking tunnel that opened up into a cavern, light streaming down from holes in the vaulted ceiling to light the water below in a luminous turquoise glow.

Avery crept around the edges of the underground lake, hugging the cavern sides as he cast a distrustful eye at the crystalline waters. He wasn't even halfway across the cavern, but was already strongly debating turning around. This seemed like exactly the place where some evil beast would dwell, and he could vividly imagine a rusalka's creeping claws reaching out for him from the pool. But he was determined, just get to the other side, get out of here, and find his sister so they could get off of this stupid death-trap of a mountain.

Just then, Avery felt something cold land on his his head. He shrieked, limbs flying every which direction before he started to blindly run. "VIIIIC! VIIIIIIIC!!!! HEEEEEEEELP!!!! It's got me, it's GOT MEEEE!" He screamed.

I'm gonna assume Cotton would know the names of @Avery and @Victoria but message me if that isn't alright c:
And if she wants to, Victoria can hop in. pls help them.

That didn't - that didn't sound good. None of what his straining ears were picking up signified happiness or anything else that was pleasant in the world. In fact, what he was hearing was almost the exact opposite of what he listed above.

He was expecting to hear the distant splash of snow and pebbles hitting the water, or maybe even some kind of echoing whoosh noise as they fell. What he wasn't expecting, however, was shrieking. The kind of shrieking that explicitly implied brutal death by scary monster, which was the worst kind of shrieking in his book.

His ears folded back against his skull and he took a wary step away from what he now dubbed the Death Hole. Because that's what it was, wasn't it? Snow entered and what sounded like a massacre occurred below. And man, he really had to stop meeting people this way. Sooner or later his heart was going to give out, or someone was really going to die and he'd be the one to blame. At least he knew the poor wolf below was alive and well, if their echoing screams meant anything. But something got them and they probably weren't going to be alright for long and...

W a i t.

He froze as his mind whirred to life, because who was Vic? It didn't sound like a proper kind of name with its one abrupt syllable. But his name was Cottongrass of all the things, so what did he know. Was - was Vic short for something? Something like Victoria? That sounded like an actual name, and the name of a wolf he recently met. She had a brother, right? A part of him worried about what if it was a different Vic, and he was just going to make a fool of himself calling out the wrong name. That was a chance he was willing to take and he blinked into the darkness below. His earlier panic faded the longer he thought about what was going on.

"Victoria?" He tested, shifting his weight from one paw to the other. She had a brother, and he wracked his brain for a name of the faceless wolf in his head. "Avery?" That was it, wasn't it? He was all too ready to start listing off every name he knew that started with the letter A. But instead he held his breath, settling for twisting his neck one way than the other.

Victoria had to be somewhere close by, right? He didn't know what he was going to do otherwise about the wolf he may or may not have accidentally murdered. It was just some snow...

And then there was a voice from above, the cavern walls reverberating the meek sound into a thunderous bellow. Avery stumbled over himself, tripping, falling, and rolling, and then running in the opposite direction when he came back on his paws. In his panicked state he ran nose-first into a wall, snubbing the wet leathery pad against the rough rock and knocking him back onto his rear. He sat, a little dazed, before glancing nervously around with his ears glued flat against his head. He'd gotten so turned around that he wasn't sure where the exit was anymore, and worse still, there was a disembodied voice that knew not only his name, but his sister's. 

Trembling he licked his lips, clearing his throat before he called out to the phantom. "Ehm, hello?" He looked around, round yellow eyes flicking between the shadows and little pools of light that streamed from the ceiling, looking for who was calling out to him. He couldn't find them, but he knew this was it. He came up to this big stupid mountain, in the pits of hell to be exact, and some demon or demi-god was taunting him. He was no match. Avery bowed down on the ground, lying prostrate with his head low between his shaking elbows. "I don't know w-who you are, or h-h-how you know my n-n-name. I'd j-just like to r-respectfully a-a-ask," He gulped, closing his eyes tightly as he took a deep breath. "I'd just like to ask, that if you're going to eat me, make it quick! And leave my sister alone!"

Of course she hadn't made it back before Avery woke up. A mild panic had gripped her when she was only met with cold earth where her brother should have been sleeping, sending Cottongrass back to check out the way they had come from while she put her nose to the ground to try and find her sibling. It was hard to find him with the recent snowfall. No matter how she cast about she couldn't find a fresh trail. He couldn't be gone, no he wouldn't have tried to go home without her... would he? Urgh there was nothing to it, she'd have to try and see if Cottongrass had had better luck.

He was easier to track, his fresh trail leading back up the goat track that had served her so well as a path last night. She fought back a yawn, now was no time to get tired! She had to find Avery! Instead what she found, was a booming echo and her pale companion talking to a hole in the ground... but she knew that voice didn't she? "AVERYYYY!" she called to her brother, tail taking up a frantic pace as she drew closer to where his voice was coming from. Had she thought it through a bit more she might have slowed her approach but in her haste she slipped and fell right in with a shriek.

She could feel her stomach in her mouth as time seemingly stretched out, then suddenly she was cold, and wet, the echo of her own splash lost on her submerged ears. She fought her way to the surface, head breaking the surface with a cough and a splutter, wide eyes looking about the dark cavern until a familiar form came to sight. There was no hiding her relief as she paddled to the edge of the underground lake, "I'm okay! I'm fine!" she called out for @Cottongrass's sake more than @Avery's. Paws grasped at slippery stone as she began to shiver, "'S-too cold for swimming Ave, help me out!"

He shuffled closer towards the gap in the cavern's ceiling, ears straining to pick up whatever horrors were happening underneath the edge. And winced because the echoing did nothing to mask the wolf's words of panic and fear. It didn't feel good, knowing that his first impression to Avery would be that he was some kind of monster that was going to eat him and his sister up. His ears folded back against his skull, because how could he even fix that?

(The answer he went with was that he didn't. Because Victoria would come along and somehow make everything better. How, he didn't have a clue. She just would, was what childish belief told him.)

He peered back over his shoulder, yellow eyes brightening and mood elated at said she-wolf's approaching presence. There she was! Coming closer towards the gap that had Avery somewhere below. His tail wagged and he stepped to face her, because she was a godsend that he never thought he'd need. And he had good news for her, even if he had a pretty good suspicion that she already knew if he were to judge by her yelling. He didn't care. It felt good to talk to someone that didn't think he was a wolf-eating monster.

"I think I found your --" brother, was what he was going to say. But that sentence kind of got cut short at what he witnessed moments after. It took a second to register, but it still packed just as much of a punch.

She fell.

He watched as she didn't stop at the edge and instead kept on going, plummeting into what he was hoping water. There was a heart-clenching second where he worried about a repeat of the Pumpkin Incident 2016. But he heard her shriek, the splash, and finally - her calls that she was okay. Didn't make him wilt any less on the inside, though. Because he really, really had to stop having these kinds of things happen around him. And what was he - what was he supposed to do now? Besides panic and flail, of course.

He settled for teetering on the edge that started it all, whining and pawing and snuffling as he paced. There were so many words he could've strewn together to make some kind of sentences, like a million apologies and pleas for forgiveness because he probably almost killed her. Again. But out of the sea of verbal garbage - he settled for letting out a startled, panicked bark that echoed on the walls of the cavern. Because that's how much of a help he was at any given moment.

(This post was last modified: Nov 19, 2016, 01:17 AM by Cottongrass.)

Avery awaited his judgement with bated breath, limbs trembling under him like jello. He hadn't expected his last day on earth would be today, and especially not like this! He was young still, there was so much left he hadn't done yet! His moms would never know what happened to him, and he hoped they would never find out, it would break their hearts! And poor Victoria, if she were unlucky enough she might run across his skeleton picked clean down to the bone. He could imagine it so vividly he could almost hear her voice, screaming for him... His ears twitched, his shaking momentarily stilled, wait, he wasn't just imagining things... That was her! 

Avery jumped to his paws, hope renewed with a new dash of fear. He wouldn't let the beast lay a single claw on his sister! "Vic!!!!" Avery yelled, dashing forward as she fell from the heavens, the monumental splash drenching him from head to toe. Again with the water! 

"I got you!" He yipped as he gingerly waded in and reached out for her, grasping the skin at her shoulder once she'd paddled close enough and pulling her ashore. "Vic, oh thank goodness you're here, you're alive, I was so worried..." He trailed off, glancing around nervously. "Look, we gotta get out of here, there's something, some kind of monster in here!" He whined.

As her brother helped to haul her from the water she heaved a sigh of relief, his panicked words barely registering as shaky limbs found solid ground. She tried to put some distance between them before vigorously shaking her coat to remove as much of the (probably stagnant) water as she could, eyes turning to the spot of light in the ceiling that had marked her entrance. "Hey @Cottongrass?" she queried rather loudly, paying no heed to @Avery's monster at this point. She could only hope the white male was still near the hole in the ground... ceiling... whatever... "D'you think you can head back down to where we started? I can come and get you if you think you'll get lost again!" she added the second as an option, given he had already lost who knows how many someones.

Keeping an ear turned for an answer, she turned her attention to the myriad of tunnels laid out before them. "Do you know which one you came down?" she asked her brother in a quieter voice than she had used to address Cottongrass. If he didn't have the answer she'd have to try and sniff it out, but with a freezing nose full of water, she wasn't sure just how sucessful she'd end up being.

His pacing and worrying ground to a halt when he heard his name come from the depths below. What replaced it was an absent-minded sort of buzzing, the kind that was low and grating in the back of his mind. Because he could - he could do what she asked, right? There was no way he was that incompetent, that he couldn't retrace his own steps. But how many times had he gotten himself lost? Where he'd get to the point where everything blurred together until he gave a tired smile and said everything was fine, because he didn't like that place anyway. The worry found its home again deep in his chest, right where it belonged.

(Too many, was what his brain hissed, over and over again.)

"I'll uh - I'll uh," he called back down, "meet you there." The answer churned uneasily in his stomach, pushing him to shift his weight from one paw to the next. He wanted to shout that he'd stay put, wait until they came and got him. But the gaps of his mind, the ones where logic was supposed to be, twisted her words. The second answer was suddenly shameful, nothing but bait for his own failure. And he didn't need that.

He twisted away from the gap of the cavern's ceiling and the hole in the ground, away from the murky blue water that suddenly teased him. Carefully - carefully, his jaws clamped down around his tongue. He struggled to swallow down the emotions that were trying to strangle him. Because he didn't - he didn't need that. Not ever. His body felt too tense and he was blinking too much.

­It was the snow - the damned snow getting into his eyes, he told himself. There wasn't anger or guilt or shame inside of him, and there certainly wasn't any of those emotions being directed at anyone that wasn't himself. He slunk away towards that path he'd come moments before, down to the place she mentioned.

Making her and her brother find their way out and come all the way back up just for him would be bad, he decided. It soothed whatever he felt and his steps came easier after. Because no matter how tempted he was to sulk in childish anger at having his fragile ego bruised, the guilt and sympathy he felt won out.

(This post was last modified: Dec 13, 2016, 11:49 PM by Cottongrass.)

@Victoria

Avery couldn't help but be a little disappointed when his sister failed to indulge in his puerile whining. She seemed to be not the least bit concerned that some sort of nebulous beast was shrieking down at them from the sky, ready to kill them and pick their bones clean. In a strange turn of events, she was talking to it... Avery's tawny brow furrowed, the gears turning. So it... wasn't a monster then?


"Cotton-what?" He blinked, his ears held awkwardly out to the sides. He was about to ask who she was talking to, before Vic turned to him with a question about how to get out of there. Earlier in his panic he would have never figured the way out, but he'd managed to settle down enough since she'd arrived to use his head.

"Uhm... errrmm.... Yeah.... I think..." He started, his leathery nose twitching as he sniffed a few of the exits. Fresh air drifted through one of them, lightly perfumed with snow and scrub pine. He couldn't say he was entirely sure, but it seemed familiar. "This way, it's gotta be," He decided, starting through the tunnel but sticking close to Victoria's side in case anything leapt at them from the shadows.

Avery was surprised to see a white wolf standing to meet them as they emerged. A male close to their own age, who was decidedly not a monster; big, but almost angelic in his fluffy white coat. Oh heavens... Avery internally groaned. Had this poor chap had to listen to all his childish wailing earlier? Avery almost wanted to crawl back into the dark gaping maw of the cave they'd just left and die alone of embarrassment. Instead he scuffed his paws, sheepishly licking his lips and turning his attention towards his sister just so he didn't have to look him in the eye. "Friend of yours?" He asked.