The Written Works: The Hated Sound

Maybe fifteen hours later (Jordini couldn’t tell you just how long it was because she was terrible at telling time), she was exhausted. She had somehow traveled far enough that the loamy dirt under her feet had become soft clay. The brambles were still there, but they were too small to pose any real threat to her, so her legs could finally be free of the brambles.

She just had to hope that the next town would be somewhat close to her. Or maybe she’s been going in the complete wrong direction. She didn’t have a map to make sure. So, after looking around a final time to make sure she couldn’t see any lights off in the distance, she decided to continue the journey in the morning and sat down on the ground.

The wind rustling in her ears was a very comforting noise. Small patches of flowers were blooming from the cracks in the clay, and she picked a couple of them that were beside her. Little daisies, just barely past the blooming stage, and they were still somewhat purple. Her favorite stage of the little flowers. She put one in her hair and held the other one to her chest, leaning back even further and preparing to fall asleep.

But, of course, no one was allowed any peace in this world. Soon, she heard an ugly, nauseating noise. A noise like that of something sticky and viscous being pushed onto a surface and then pulled off with the most unsatisfying squeal. That noise made her want to gag. She looked around for the noise, but she couldn’t see anything.

At length, she sat up, cracking all of her joints before looking around with a curious gaze. The sun had set long ago, so if something or someone were coming for her, she wouldn’t be able to tell. What a comforting thought, she told herself. How lovely that something’s coming after me and I won’t know what it is until it’s too late.

She knew that the noise was coming from her left, so she backed up from the noise, directly into a row of trees. They were thin trees, but they were trees nonetheless, and she couldn’t get through them without squeezing. So she stared ahead, looking for the slightest figure in the inky abyss.

The horrid noise got louder and louder. She started to see something of a figure. Well, was it? She couldn’t tell. It was just a blob, transparent and slightly tinting the darkness green. She scooted to the side of the rows of trees, readying herself to run, when the moonlight came through the canopies and she could finally see.

It was just a blob. A transparent blob. She’d been right. It was a bright neon green, with two unsettling black orbs for eyes and a line for a mouth. It seemed slightly displeased at the sight of her. The two of them stared at each other for a long time. Then, the slime started bouncing towards her. Slowly at first, but it sped up.

So, of course, she refused to be swallowed by this thing. She went behind the rows of trees, thinking the slime would be too stupid to follow her, but it squeezed through the holes, regathering itself on the other side and leaving a film of itself all over. So she started running again. 

The slime was absorbing everything in its path. Branches, bits of loose moss, rocks, you name it. And it was slowly growing larger. It had been just her height. Now it was maybe seven feet. Her aching legs begged her to stop running, but one look back at that thing gave them a burst of energy for a little while. Her arms, which barely had the energy to move anymore, flailed helplessly in the wind.

She had now lost her last bit of strength, and her legs were ready to fail her, so she stumbled around a corner of trees and promptly collapsed into the clay. The slime came closer. Closer. Closer. She was going to die. She scooted back and stared up at the slime creature, folding her entire body up with only her hand outstretched, hoping it would somehow stop this beast.

She waited for it to swallow her. One second passed, then two, then five. She wondered why she wasn’t dead yet. She opened one eye cautiously, only to see a ginormous wall of clay right in front of her. She stood up and hesitantly approached it.

It was a wall of clay, alright. She just had to wonder where it came from. The slime was nowhere to be seen. That’s when she tried to see what was behind the wall, only to walk around and see it was a clay box, with a roof. The slime was inside. Trapped.

Now she finally sat down, looking at the box curiously. She wanted to sleep, but she also wanted to know where that box came from (because she could never sleep with a question unsolved in her mind). The clay looked like it was pulled right out of the ground. Unless there was someone else around and they were being very quiet, she and the slime were the only living things around that could’ve done that. So the only natural conclusion was that… she did it.

Something like that was normal in the world of Euthawal if you came from the Nature Kingdom, but Jordini was still her regular self, from her world. She shouldn’t be able to do that. So… how did she?

She tried for a long time to figure that out too, but none of the answers her loopy mind came up with sounded right. It had already been thirty minutes. Before long, her eyes closed; she had passed out from exhaustion.