Bab 34: Atsile of Zenonia: Curiosity [Kolme]

Thumping.

Each second, each moment spent underwater, her limbs locked like a figurine. The doll had only stared at the surface as the ground shook. The river was making ripples, each wave taller than the last.

Though eyeless and expressionless, the puppet was scared. The jaded view of the sky slowly darkening, the fish swimming away from fear and walls beginning to crack again. It's all happening again, just when she was so close to freedom.

Eight faces that screamed terror, eight legs that shifted the land itself, serving no other purpose than to just cause natural disasters wherever it pleases. An unknown arrogance from a mindless beast, not once ever taking account for its actions. Evil, evil incarnate, that thing was, the doll cursed.

It was evil. It needs to die. It needs to die today, it needs to die tomorrow, it needs to die forever and ever!

The miserable puppet tightened her grasp on the handle and slammed it into her stomach again. She'll be damned if she wants to be trapped again. Not when the lock is so close to breaking, not when the cage bars are finally bending, not when she's finally tearing herself apart from this hell hole!

No teeth to grind, no pain to feel, not even a pretty dress to wear. She misses the sunlight, she misses the air, she misses living. She misses living so much.

So, so, much.

A splash to another splash, sinking and sinking next to her. Next to the doll that's destroying herself, next to the doll that didn't even know what life is yet. Life that she wants back.

She wants life.

She wants life!

She wants to live!

The crack falls apart in the midst of the shaking. Her stomach had fallen in, finally. Her imaginary heart raced as the puppet tried to pry herself away from the rock with whatever strength that she had. Her fingers bent, digging into the very slab of the earth itself.

The seismic quake was getting stronger the longer she stayed there. The world itself is falling apart, the world itself is being thrown around. The ravine might collapse even as more rocks and soil began to bury the river.

The doll mentally grunts again as she pushes with all her might. A chunk of stone sunk into the river, one that would lead to her demise had she been placed just a teeny bit to the right. More bits of the land was falling in, the sun now completely covered by the arrogant monster.

One of its long appendages stomped the ground, screaming and wailing, tossing whatever is standing on the surface and deep underground. At that moment, the quaking was pulling the delirious puppet away just at the right time she was attempting to pry herself again. Momentum and the strength of a cornered animal, it was just a matter of time until something snapped.

Then, the poor doll felt light. Like the clouds she had only barely seen, like the birds that she doesn't know the existence of. She was floating, with a torn dress and a tattered jacket. That is fine, she thought, she always repeated to herself that she'll get more or make more.

Is it even possible to recreate such fine silk? Ah, must be nice, she thought.

The ground shakes again.

And from that short state of calmness, comes a plunging state of mania. She was free from her tomb, but not from that wretched thing. That thing, that thing that can so easily put her back in another cage. Pin her down again, rob her from it all again.

Her arms swung aimlessly in the water, the only reliable thing to get her out of this place. She tried to swing her legs too but she had forgotten that she needed to forsake them to be free. She'll make more, she'll make more or get more. There must be a way. Let there be.

The river stream continued to flow with ripples, with the waves rising as high as they shouldn't be. The doll still remained submerged, only focusing to swim forward as best as she could. The last time she resurfaced for whatever reason, it ended her getting stuck for who knows how long.

She kept clawing forward, traces of fabric left behind in pursuit of a better place. Long until the shadows finally couldn't chase her anymore, until the lands finally came to a halt, until that monster was nowhere in sight. She kept clawing forward through the running river.

Until she truly was sure that was far, so far away from whatever that place was, whatever that thing was, she would continue to mindlessly swim like a poor salmon.

The sun, one who had overlooked the doll's endeavours from day one, is setting upon the horizon.

The puppet was now drifting, both of her arms now letting themselves be dragged by the stream. She couldn't feel exhaustion, but she was tired. She couldn't feel pain, but she was tortured. The marionette lost her legs, she could still feel them kicking.

It was when the moon finally peeked its head when the eyeless fish emerged from the depths of the river. The air was cold, the dancing wind of the valley blowing into her eye sockets when all of the water finally poured out. Though, the doll was struggling to maintain buoyancy, even in calm waters.

After a while, the puppet finds herself crawling on the rocky shores of the river, climbing each boulder one at a time. Stone, to stone, to stone, to finally, a handful of grass had made contact with her fingers.

Little blades of grass tickling her hands, scratching her dress and tattered face. Strange, these things were. Why do these green little things exist? What are these things attached beneath them? Buried beneath the dirt and soil, what are they?

The doll had found herself mystified by just the simplest of things. The trees her hands placed, the barks were rougher than the smooth planks in the ruined house. The leaves that hang from the branches, the puppet reached upwards. So vibrant. Why are they vibrant? Why are the ones on the ground so pale and easy to tear apart?

More and more questions come to the mind of the infant as she crawled deeper into the forest. Twigs and bugs were crawling on her dress and skin, rustling through bushes and shrubs. Through the dead of night where the gentle moon foresight her fate.

The forest critters watch from a safe distance. The natural predators who took notice of her were wary, but not interested in a piece of statue that was just moving slowly. Though some of them took interest in her and every time they approached, the doll had only pretended to be dead. Rigid, refusing to move even an inch.

From a reindeer with eyes around its entire body, a giant reptilian creature with an indomitably nasty spit oozing from its jaw, to a pack of canines who just walked over her redundant torso. They quite much didn't show too much interest and she was glad that they didn't.

Despite this, the puppet continued to crawl through the forest. What way does she know anyway? What other choice was there? Only to just keep crawling, and crawling, and crawling. Uproot each grass in her journey, become dead quiet when an animal and continue to crawl again.

And swat every spider she comes across.

The moon tires as it rests once again, the sun taking its place over the forest.