Broken Timelines ✔️

Phoebe - A Tale of Cobalt

Tears flow freely from my pretty cobalt eyes as I glance upon the cross atop Mt Ebott bearing an orange ribbon. My Brother and Sara have been missing for weeks now. No child is allowed alone near the mountain now. They put sentries at the bottom of the trail, but I know a secret. If you poke a gnarl in one of the trees then it creates a small rockslide and that means the sentries have to clear out until the stone mason picks up the new materials. I sigh, the orange and cyan ribbons fluttering in the breeze. It makes me sad to think my siblings may be dead, or even if they are alive down in the mountain they aren't coming back. We have to accept these things. I may just be six but I have completely accepted things such as inevitability and fate. I will die one day. My Mom and Pa will die one day. My brother and sister are most likely dead or gone forever. GrandMom is rotting in the ground and not in a heaven. GrandPa chuckles at my observations. He says I have Integrity. When I asked him what that meant he said I had achieved 'moral soundness' and made peace with myself. My calm and caring nature comes from the fact that I know that everything can be alright if we try hard enough. I want to be a sentry, but women aren't allowed to protect or guard things at the moment. Which is stupid. Women would probably be better than the men anyway. I walk from the family farm in my blueberry tutu and my ballet shoes, and head towards the secret tree. I love puzzles. They require logic and thinking, and I'm a great thinker. Everything can be a puzzle if you think about it. I sneak past the sentries and around to the side of the base of Mt Ebott, and find the tree. Pressing the gnarl, I hear a loud rumble and duck back around to the sentry point. They're gone and I quickly clamber over the rather large pile of boulders. Wandering up the path, I take note of the two pairs of footprints that each lead off the trail. I decide to follow them, after all, I might as well try to find out where my siblings are. I glance around and take notice of a crater near the top of the Mountain. Poking my head over the top, I notice it isn't a crater, it's a hole into a cavern, but it goes pretty deep. I stretch my neck further to try to see if there's anything to land on the rock I'm holding onto crumbles under my weight. I lose my balance and tumble headfirst into the abyss, whirling and flipping through the air. And the reality of it all hits me.

I'm Falling.

I'm Falling.

I'm Falling.

Until I finally hit a large pile of dirt with an oomph. I roll sideways and I acquire a large cut on my cheek from a cobalt half bone sticking out from the dirt. It's clearly snapped in half and the sheared part cut me. Huh. I get up and brush the dust off myself, before pressing my blue jumper to my cheek. I wander through the purple dungeon cavern thingy, easily solving the door puzzle, the rock puzzle, and the pitfall puzzles. I get to a quaint house, but decide to go to the right before entering the home. I find a weird balcony thing with quite the view, and a toy knife lying on the floor. Sara's... I don't pick it up. This could be where she's buried. It could be a memorial. And either way, I don't want to touch it until I find Sara.

I hurry through the house, down the stairs, and into a Snowy Woodlands. I wander through the woods until I come to a town, weirdly named 'Snowdin'. I pass through, getting a rather unsavoury feeling from the looks the Monsters are giving me, but I guess I'm the weird one. A human in the Monster world. Huh. I head past a rather nice large house for sale and into a snow blizzard. I put my hands in front of my face and press onwards and find myself in a... Another cave, really? The biomes in this mountain are simply amazing. It's a wet cave, filled with waterfalls. I explore a little, finding a happy little ducky to chat to for a while. The pretty flowers make hushed whispers, and I can tell they echo the last thing said to them or around them. Heheheh. I like this place. I find hidden secret areas behind waterfalls and in reeds, and I lay down in a bed of echo flowers and fall asleep after a few hours. Feeling tiredness and fatigue, I decide to fall asleep.

I awaken to blackness, and I'm watching a cobalt heart being attacked by a muscular horse-fish(?) by the name of Aaron. He hits the heart and I feel a crack in myself. He gathers the broken SOUL into a jar and flexes away, but a Skeleton sucks the glow from it into his hand. One of his hands has an orange glow and the other is cobalt now. I look at myself and I'm a small grey heart. I feel the same though. A sense of moral soundness. That sounds right GrandPa. The skeleton figure looks at me and holds out his palm with the blue glow. I float effortlessly towards it and feel my Integrity pulse strongly against my SOUL. Gaster presses his palms together, and I feel a sense of completion. I feel the bone I fell upon join with its other half and I sense a strong masculine SOUL near mine. I merge with my brother's SOUL and we float into the glowing bone. And in a flash, I forget we're two separate entities.

Who, am I?

I'm dropped unceremoniously in front of a large house in Snowdin. My limbs are weak and jelly-like and I hear three strong knocks on the door. Gaster disappears with the wind, and a young skeleton opens the door, looks down at me, and grins.
"Hey! You must be my brother Papyrus! Dad said he'd drop you off! I'll bring you in and warm you up a bit, then I'll read you a story!"

Papyrus. Yes, that sounds familiar. I am Papyrus.