Wanderlust - Ninjago SI-OC

PROLOGUE

Surrounded by crystals in a nowhere cave, Vale wonders in a panicked daze when did her day go so wrong.

It might have been when she found her sister's body down a ravine, before appearing in the cave. It could've been earlier that day, when she looked over her town from atop a tree and felt a pit form in her stomach. Or maybe, it was destined to go wrong even before all that, when she first woke up that morning and an invisible weight left her pinned to her bed, the nick-nacks around her room feeling foreign and long lost.

...yeah it probably started with her waking up. Her worst days always start like that.

It was weird.

Going through her morning routine felt weird.

Vale just walked around her house preparing herself for her day, and all the while there was a pull inside of her, deep in her guts. Almost like a longing of sorts. Of what, she wasn't sure, but it didn't leave her for the rest of the day.

She should've known all was doomed from then.

School was normal. Her job too. Or, well, her apprenticeship, since she couldn't technically work as a fourteen-year-old. It all went nice and smooth and quiet and that only made Vale want to throw up. Something was wrong. Nothing was wrong but something was wrong.

Her uneasiness didn't go unnoticed. At least not by everyone. Her boss, a bulky old man named Hugo, watched her carve a wooden rose with furrowed brows. Ever since they met, Hugo had been able to read her like a book. She was too lively, he said, and had too many tells.

Her tell for being uneasy?

Her silence.

She was never silent.

"Y, Vale, ¿dormiste bien?" he asked, sitting on a stool opposite her and working on a piece of clay. Distantly, Vale recalls him mentioning someone commissioned a vase. He spares a glance at her from his hunched position before going back to his work, voice smoky and casual, "Te veo distraida."

"¿Mhmm?" Vale stops her strokes to stare at the man, knife held loosely in one hand and the half-finished rose held in the other. Their little workshop is filled to the brim with wooden carvings and wind chimes, warm sunrays from outside the windows giving the place a lively vibe. Vale's stomach turns on itself, and she barely manages to gulp down a sudden rush of bile in her mouth. "Ah, no. Me quede despierta hasta tarde, nomás."

"¿Segura?"

"Sisi. Me quede viciando con el celu hasta las dos de la mañana."

That earns her a chuckle from him, and the pull she's been feeling all day quells for a moment. Vale smiles. Then the world goes blurry and the knife falls from her hand, bile rushing at her again with way more acid than should be normal. Hugo turns around to face her, but now Vale's the one hunching over, hands pressed tightly against her mouth.

"... ¿Segura que estas bien?"

Vale blinks furiously, her eyes hot and teary. Her gaze stays on the floor, uncertainty flashing through her eyes as she swallows her bile yet again. When she speaks, her voice is small.

"... ¿Me puedo ir?"

"Andate tranquila nomás. Anda a descansar."

That's all Vale needs to hear to pack her stuff and go.

Her town is made of dirt roads and fairy lights, not more than three-thousand something habitants keeping it alive. Everyone knows everyone, or so her parents claim, and everything is close together, the most far away house in town being thirty minutes away from the center. And as all teens raised there, Vale knows the streets like the back of her hand, all shortcuts, routes and paths burned into her brain. It's not a surprise that it only takes her ten minutes to get back home.