Ink Stained

16: upside-down drowning*

逆さまの溺死

When Shiori recovers from spluttering and coughing out water, still feeling like her lungs are drowning in the lake of her stomach, and from the shock of landing painfully on stone cold ground, she can only stare dazedly around herself.

All around her are clouds. The ground looks like it's made from them, but it can't be because she feels that she's sitting on something solid. They're just covering it, and it sets her teeth on edge with fright that she can't see what it is she's sitting on. The cloud-ground, no matter what direction she turns to, stretches far beyond what she can see. The same goes for what is above her; it's just a ceiling of heavy, dark smog that looks impenetrable.

She can hear the roar of powerful waves crashing against each other as they pound relentlessly towards a distant shore Shiori has a strange feeling might not be there. Her hair is plastered to her back and face as she pushes it out of her eyes and leans to the side, trying to peer around her.

There, right next to her hand, is a hole in the cloud-ground.

Shiori snatches her hand away from it with a startled gasp and wiggles backwards. She could have fallen through it if she'd made only the slightest movement in the wrong direction. She freezes when she realizes there could be any number of holes, just there for her to plunge through if she moves one more inch. Her heart pounds in her chest, the rush of blood to her head almost unbearably loud in the silence that surrounds her.

Shiori hesitantly kneels and leans forward, blowing hard to clear some of the mist and looking past her dripping nose down below. There is a black, angry sea broiling beneath her, with white foam running over the scaly ridged backs of serpentine creatures that swim close to the surface of the water. She spies the end of a barbed tail lashing angrily as one of the creatures dives down deeper into the stormy water.

A shaky gasp works its way out of her as she stares down below. If she's not careful with where she steps, she could fall through and land as one of those creatures' dinner.

She wipes off the water dripping from the tip of her nose and sits back on her heels as she looks around her and wonders what to do. She keeps her arms wrapped tight around her knees, afraid to move. She knows she needs to stand and walk around, to look, but what if she falls through one of those holes?

More importantly...why is Pai's subconscious like this? That's all this place can be, because where else could she have landed? But why does it look like this? Shiori feels like this place looks better suited to being what the world probably once looked like, in the beginning, before any gods created anything. There;s too much chaos, too much...something, in this place.

It's the polar opposite to what Pai is. She's neat, she likes being neat, she's polite, she's kind, though she does tend to put other's before herself which Shiori is always worried Pai will take too far to her own detriment.

Shiori shakes her head, putting her hands down on either side of her legs and getting to her knees on the stone cold ground, peering over the cloudy edge to the angry sea below. It doesn't matter. What this place looks like, what it means, none of that matters.

She needs to find Pai. That's what matters.

It's only when Shiori looks behind herself that she realizes that there is someone else here with her, in this place – and it's not the Kitsune man from before.