Look Me in the Eyes (and tell me that it's me) [Zhongchili]

Chapter 25 - Purpose

Ajax falls.

He falls through a deep pit of nothingness. He reaches up to where the sun should be, but the black has stolen its light, and he grasps only the void. There should be something, anything—the wind whistling in his ears, a flash of light—but there's silence and darkness, silence and darkness.

He's falling so far.

He's going to die.

He's going to land in the middle of a deep, isolated cave, and the floor is going to be hard, and he's going to splatter into a puddle of Ajax soup. Maybe he won't feel anything. He'll be here, and then he won't.

He hopes Mother and Father forgive him. He hopes his siblings, as young as they are, might remember him.

Ajax closes his eyes, bracing himself.

Hopefully it'll be quick.

Then he lands. Not on solid ground that turns him into Ajax soup, but on what feels like a giant pond of slime. It bends beneath him, gradually slowing his fall, then undulates upwards again, bringing him to a stop.

Ajax opens his eyes. Above him is a sea of stars, sparkling like the sun off of Snezhnayan snow, but he recognises none of the constellations, which is strange, because Father always teaches him a new one whenever they go ice fishing. What's more, the ground bends when he presses down on it, a strange purple-blue quasi liquid that shimmers as though a toy factory's worth of glitter has been dumped into it.

What is this place?

Maybe he is dead.

He runs his hand against the ground, attempting to scoop up a handful to inspect, and catches his reflection as he does so. His cheeks are fuller, rounder than the ones he knows, and his overall stature is missing a few inches from his current height. By his estimations, he must be around his early teens.

What the hell is teenage him doing in a place like this?

The ground gloop slips through his fingers, merging back with the surface below, and the alienness of the place strikes him all at once. He has no idea what this is, he has no idea where he could be, and he has no idea how to get out of here. A deep, sinking fear stalks him, a prowling dread that grabs him by the middle and squeezes until the breath is expelled from his lungs, leaving him lightheaded and shaking. But he can't stay here. He needs to be brave. He needs to keep going. He needs to call for help. He needs to get out. Somehow.

Sucking in a deep breath, he gets to his feet and starts to run. "Mother? Father? Can you hear me?" To where he's running he doesn't know, but terror snaps at his heels and he can't stop. "I'm here! I'm down here! Where are you? Anyone up there? Please, anyone, help!"

He runs and calls, runs and calls, but no one answers. Stride after stride he races for what feels like miles across the starlight plain, but the scenery remains exactly the same, and as hard as he runs, he's going nowhere.

Ajax falls to his knees with a cry, punching the stupid, squishy ground.

He's stuck here. He's going to die here. Maybe he'll die of thirst, or maybe some terrible creature will rise up from beneath this strange ocean and suck him down to its depths, filling his lungs with suffocating goo.

The corners of his eyes sting, his vision blurring at the edges, and he wipes at them furiously, blinking hard. Stupid wet eyes. He's too old to cry. He stopped crying after primary school, and he's not going to start again now.

"They won't hear you. Not here," says a voice from behind him, and Ajax leaps to his feet, drawing an iron shortsword from the scabbard at his hip. There stands the woman from his previous dream, cloaked in the cosmos, her expression as cold as midwinter's ice. "Now please be quiet; you're interrupting my training."