Rock Between Us (Stardew Valley Fanfic)

Mountain Breeze

Laughter.

He actually felt like laughing, sitting up there eating his lunch, wearing the sunglasses despite all the sunshine, enjoying the fresh air and the bite of the wind on their cheeks, along with the nature and view surrounding him.

"How long has it been since I've actually felt like laughing?" he thought to himself, leaning back on the palms of his hand. He took a deep breath. "I guess I'd better head back down for the day. I can always come back up here or find another sweet spot."

Limberly, he started down the rocky slope, steadily heading down, a smile spread across his face slipping the sunglasses up when he got low enough for the sun to no longer be a problem. He reached the ledge below and decided to rest, taking out a water bottle and getting a quick drink before slipping it back into his bag so he could head on down.

"Today went surprisingly well, making me glad I decided to take this up again." His fingers twisted into the rock, his feet finding their perch on the way down, but there was that feeling—that feeling that nothing could go wrong.

And—

Blackness.

"No, there was a feeling of dread before a sudden surge of pain which made me blank out, but I felt..."

Sebastian let out a groan, opening up his eyes and looking at the rocky walls of the trail as he attempted to take in what happened.

"There was the feeling of the rock shaking out of my grip. But, I used the belay, so I should have hit the wall if I slipped, not the ground."

Sebastian let out a groan, contemplating what to do next.

"Moving isn't a bad idea, but I should maybe stop and think about what places hurt. My head?"

There was no pain in his head.

"Good. Still going to get a lecture about a helmet. And I can feel my legs." There was a maniacal laugh in his head as he thought about how he was lucky not to have broken his back. "Lucky my ass. It hurts like shit! And Maru will give me hell when I get back home." He turned his head slightly, letting out a deep breath as the pain made his vision blur. There came that groan of pain, something he couldn't control as he continued to lie there. "What is the worst-case scenario?"

It was, of course, internal bleeding, maybe broken ribs—anything is broken, to be honest, and there was definite pain in his side, though he'd not located it. Breathing was—

"Well, I can breath fine." Sebastian narrowed his eyes, focusing his vision as his throat tightened, his fingers twisting into the ground. "Can I move? I need to know if I can move. And if so—"

If so, he needed to get help.

So he started moving, only to find it complicated, difficult. There was, after all, a lot of pain. That pain made it difficult to sit up. And slow. Way too painfully slow, to the point he almost collapsed a couple of times, and in his mind, he knew it was good, that things might be terrible until he decided to roll over onto his back and wasn't on the injuries.

Sebastian breathed in and then out, wanting to scream his head in frustration. And he did, despite knowing nobody would hear him. Nobody was out there to rescue him, at least not at that moment, so he needed to save himself somehow or get himself situated until someone could rescue him.

"At least..." Sebastian muttered, glad to hear his own voice as he looked up the trail, still wondering what made him fall. "At least I can hear my own voice."

Which wasn't much solace, although knowing he could think clearly, or somewhat clearly about his situation made it, so he felt the situation less dire when he first started realizing something terrible happened, that he'd managed to have a fall. He felt like an idiot while also lucky he'd not gotten a head injury.

He tried sitting up again, but sitting up from lying on his back, even his side was a problem because of the pain—there was too much. So he scooted himself closer to the wall, pulling himself, then used the wall to support himself as he pulled himself up, ever so slowly, gritting his teeth the entire time, propping himself up more with the wall with each inch he moved.

It was a lot of time he spent doing that, or at least it felt like a lot of time, until he finally was there, propped up, and he reached for the rope which—

Sebastian stared with the rope now in his fingers, the end clearly indicating the rope broke—that a brand new rope broke. His mouth opened, his mind attempting to fathom the luck he of all people had to run into, let alone how he'd explain to either Maru or his mother that he'd just so happened to have that kind of luck, that him adventuring at all, even into the caves was a bad thing.

"Call for help. Call Sam."

That, of course, meant getting his bag off, a painful thing. He did it and unzipped the bag, pulling out the phone, and—

"Crap."

Sebastian held the phone up in front of him with his good arm, the one which wasn't in pain. He held it up to see the cracks running across the screen, but as his fingers moved, it didn't do squat. He felt a heavy weight on his chest.

"Well, that's just my luck."

There's been that message on his phone, asking for the picture that, in turn, led to this, making him suddenly wonder what the urgent message from his half-brother was. He swallowed, regretting the fact he'd not responded, taking a deep breath while hoping—

"I need someone to find me."

He would need to use his food and water with care, hoping he'd not managed to have some kind of internal bleeding issue.

"Thank you, Maru, for gabbing all that medical crap in front of me, though..."

He wasn't going to give up and instead took a deep breath to calm himself.