The Mountain East (An Undertale Fanfiction)

Chapter 28

The faint trickle of sound leaking from top to bottom as water splashes gently atop the rocks. Corroded, broken wooden planks litter the floor, providing less of a flooring than the actual liquid body of the pool it floated on. The soft marching of footsteps and splashing of water as a foot displaced the water around it mingled with the soft sounds of Waterfall.

Breaking apart from the monochrome blue and black of Waterfall's great, extravagant cliffs, piles of multicolored objects sat still and damp, their contents divided into uneven, towering heaps. They contained a legacy from above, the only window of information available. Leather-bound books that somehow were cushioned from the deadly poison that is water; serrated leaves and greenery that had somehow survived the crushing weight atop them; plastics, metals, unwanted works.

The perfect epitome of the saying 'One man's trash is another one's treasure.'

Usually, there would be several inhabitants in the local area. Today, there was no such luck. Eerie silence and quiet waters remained the only old-timers that still nurtured the sounds.

However, the quiet was quickly interrupted. A hooded, slouching figure slowly entered the dump, their movements slow and foreboding. Their head remained firmly an inspector of the ground. Their breathing was quick, a huge mismatch between their seemingly slow approach. Perhaps it was out of tiredness, or a recent episode of emotion.

They surveyed the heaps. Occasionally, they would pick up an item and stare at it quizzically, though they skimmed over most of them. Most, to them, were nothing noteworthy. Dampened clothes, weathered playthings, rotten edibles.

One item stood out among the rest. Perhaps because it let off a strong waft of parchment, obscuring even the sick smell of trash that gripped ahold of any nose it encountered, and refused to let go. Perhaps because it was positioned neatly atop all the others, signifying its time down in the dumps, or lack thereof. Perhaps.

The silhouette picked up the book. For a moment, they froze.

"A short collection of poems and short stories." The cover read. It's silver letters seemed to be exempt from the corrosion that happened to all the other books around the place. "By Kara Ebbot."

For a while, they debated whether it would be better to let curiosity take hold, or return it to where it belongs, in the garbage. Out of fear, out of ignorance. Out of... the craving for blissful forgetfulness. They chose the former.

The title mostly did the content inside justice. Small pieces of poems, verses of songs, paragraphs of stories littered the pages. The occasional note or thought transcribed in between the lines. The handwriting was so orderly and neat, so familiar.

Most of the poems were either somewhat unedited, or just blatantly incomplete. It was almost as if the projects were stopped, abruptly. As if the author just got up one day, and decided to quit. Even the ones spanning multiple pages seemed... unpolished. Like trying to find an ending among the fog that was speculation. To forever remain a draft.

Except one.

The last entry of the book was separated by at least ten blank pages from all those that came before it. Despite its positioning, the dried, almost gray ink and poor state of its crumpled paper signified its long relationship with father time.

Their eyes darted over the words and rhymes. A poem about a prince, saving the girl he loved from a past she could never forget. A fantasy of love between two unlikely companions. It wasn't your particular fairy tale. It didn't talk about how they escaped their past with no consequences, lived on in eternal happiness. No. After all, fate, one day, catches up to us all.