EAST OF EDEN ( anakin s. ) ✔️

007 | What Should Stay Buried..

━━━━━━ ༻ 🌄 ༺ ━━━━━━
" what should stay buried "
...
━━━ ༻ CHAPTER SEVEN ༺ ━━━

          IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME since Eden actually thought of the accident. At least five years since she has stopped having those waking nightmares about it, collapsing under the memory of pain rather than the reality of it. 

Most people run in the opposite direction of fear, but when one has battled the terror and won the way she had, it came almost naturally to seek answers and to understand why now of all times had the crippling weakness of that bygone incident resurfaced to torment her. Why now, when she was perhaps the happiest she's been in a really long time? And what was it about the cave that condoned such a thing?

If by the time they sent the message to the Omni Sanctuary Eden had only agreed to follow Anakin on this wild hunt out of a lack of anything better to do in the excavation area of the Gihec settlement, now it was her own curiosity which has once again put her in charge of the descent in the cave, even as it turned narrower and narrower. The path was at times so difficult that they had to walk in only side steps. Walls half collapsed, tunnels growing narrower and rougher to the brushing shoulders, elbows and knees, until at last, they had to resort to crawling in a part that had seemingly collapsed altogether.

Anakin, caught under a rare wave of reasonable wisdom, fought many times the urge of preaching the idea of turning back. The happening outside the cave gave him quite the scare and perhaps even more of a reason to never wish to bring Eden in the situation where he'd have to watch her endure actual pain. But while such concerns made him sick and dizzy, the pull of the Force exuding from the temple they were now sure they had discovered a path to grew ever stronger, tingling his senses into acute attention, convincing him to ignore his sensible judgment for the intriguing touch of curiosity.

"I think I see a blue light ahead," Eden announced, her voice merely huffed between short breaths, coming out as ragged and shaken as her jerked movements to crawl in a space that was occasionally far too hostile to feel like an actual path. There was no room to raise her head and due to the low ceiling sometimes becoming spiked and rugged with rough edges, most of the time she'd have to decide between hitting her chin or brazing her cheek on the ground they dragged on, otherwise she'd risk a head injury. As for room on both sides, it was pretty clear by now that part of the reason her voice was so drained of any color was because the crawling tunnel was narrow enough at times to force them both to bump their elbows on the rock and Eden's skin tore with unfavorable ease at such impacts.

"The tunnel leads to a larger room," she noted after catching her breath for a good couple of seconds. "We're almost there." 

Right behind her in their crawl, Anakin struggled to listen to her voice over the shuffling of their clothes, however, just when he hoped to make out her last sentence another sound roared much louder than they ever would have on a volatile terrain, no matter how excited: rock itself growled in a tumble spurring from vibrations stirred deep beneath the mountain. 

An earthquake.

"Shit," Eden cursed under her breath and, to Anakin's utmost dismay, she did not hurry the crawl to make it out of a tunnel already filling up with rock powdered into dust from deepening cracks on both walls and the ceiling above them. No, Eden stopped moving entirely and, unclenching her fists, ripped some of the bandage to get a proper grip of her palms on the soil.

"We need to get moving!" Anakin shouted when, to his understanding, the earthquake's strength decreased only for a more powerful return to follow. 

"Place your palms on the ground and reach out through the Force the way I am right now," Eden raised her voice and a tremor from the deep escaped her closed-eyed concentration, making her grimace to regain control over the vibration. "Slow down the earthquake enough for me to reach the chamber ahead and I will take it from there to slow it for you."