She's in the swamp, that much she can tell. there's marshy ground underfoot, and mossy boughs above. But there's nobody here, and the smells and sounds are all just slightly wrong, subtle but so utterly disquieting.

Wherever the hell she is, she's completely fed up with all these bullshit little animals scurrying around clamoring for her attention. They're always underfoot when she goes to walk anywhere and it's a damned miracle she hasn't crushed any of them yet. They're fluffy and endearing enough, she guesses, but their eyes are way too bright. And they're really wide-set, too - almost as far apart as the eyes of an adult kimeti. Their heads are only barely big enough to accommodate that, and it makes them look completely ridiculous.

One of them's trying to climb up her leg now, its claws surprisingly sharp for something she'd pegged as an herbivore. She shakes it off as gently as she can stand (which, at the moment, isn't very gentle at all) and leans down to scold it for daring to be so badly trained, but she locks eyes with it and -

There's nothing but fire wherever she sets her eyes,
before and behind and above and below, the embers
settle into her fur and into her skin and it's so hot
it burns it burns it burns it burns it burns IT BURNS -

With a coughing cry she pulls her gaze away from the blazing, burning eyes of the creature at her feet. She stares straight up into the branches above, panting to catch her breath, filling her aching lungs with sweet, cool air. As her heartbeat slows to something approaching normal, she lowers her head cautiously and wonders just what the hell was that? There's a lingering tingle on her skin and the faint smell of smoke still in the air, but no actual evidence of fire to be seen anywhere.

She peers cautiously at the creature's eyes again, and they're... they're moving, like they're reflecting images - or like she's looking through its eyes, which is completely baffling and nonsensical but she somehow knows that it has to be true. A frantic glance around reveals that all of the eyes around her, every last pair, is moving in the same way, showing something somewhere else. She accidentally locks eyes with another one and has time to think oh s**t before

She's filled with a deep and aching sadness and regret, and she's running through sawgrass
to evade the sound of pursuing hooves. It cuts her and her flesh weeps for the love she's lost,
the love she as good as killed herself. She stops short at a cliff, and the wind stirs the dying
flowers there -

She pulls her eyes away and shakes her head sharply to clear it. What was that? What are these things? Her eyes snap open and she's pulled into another pair of eyes -

Her eyes are startled wide as she spits out the taste of unripe cranberries -

She just manages to break away and there's another -

The mudflats stretch out forever. Butterflies alight and tentatively reach out to taste the salt on the dried earth -

She reels back again and locks gazes with -

Lights out, little one, I love you -

She slams her eyelids shut and grits her teeth, seething and reeling and frustrated to the point of weeping. She can still feel all of them crowding her feet, scrabbling desperately for her attention. They all want her for their own, she knows now, they want it desperately. But she won't be had - they're all wrong, they're all already someone else's. They're wrong! She lashes out blindly, kicking and thrashing. The creatures squall and scatter for a moment but quickly regroup, determined to claim her and there's just too many, too many. She trips and falls, shocked into opening her eyes again -

But this time, there's nothing but a feeling of vertigo as she looks down at her own back.User Image - Blocked by "Display Image" Settings. Click to show.