Cataclysm - #1
#1 of Aetrin
An introduction to the main character (Aetrin) of my short story series.
The first of more related shorts to come.
Content Warning: references of death, loss of a loved one. This is NOT a main focus and only takes a small yet descriptive part within the story.
They tried to open their eyes and failed; the weight throughout their body was insurmountable as though the surface they lay were sucking them into oblivion. Fragments of thought flitted in and out of existence like virtual particles in the void of space, too small to retain and too far in the horizons of their mind to see. Distant white noise softly roared, a perpetual waterfall of sound unchallenged. It was rather soothing and whispered incoherent murmurs of comfort and compassion. They could feel their body puddling and absorbing through the surface underneath them, now just a pool of viscous substance. Liquid earth seeped into their fur and caressed across their skin underneath, weaving between and around every follicle. Eternity passed each second, lost in a bath of velvet and silence, gradually consuming them before wholly confining them to the far reaches of un-memory again.
They played lazily between feathers of wakefulness an innumerable amount of times until finally reaching a stable point of self awareness. With far too much effort they opened their eyes and sat upright, rubbing at their vision, tail snaking out from underneath their seat to a more comfortable position. Everything was cloudy and diffused but steadily coming into focus. Rich currents of orange, purple, and magenta flowed underneath the... floor? Ground... some sort of surface where they sat. It was micro rivers and layers of light, splayed and drifting dreamily, a stream of sunset dancing tantalizingly close beneath a glassy surface like an aurora seamlessly weaving tendrils through a twilight sky. They let one hand down beside their thigh to gently draw two fingers across the display.
The wispy fabrics of light wasted no time, the flow concentrating and diverting towards their point of contact and getting more energetic and excited in its movements. An endless freedom just out of reach. Confused but enraptured, they let their gaze wander farther to see these currents of commanding beauty all around them, coalescing in their vicinity as though themselves were an irresistible attraction. They looked even farther to where to ground began to rise all around, forming a bowl with jagged crystalline edges sawing out the short horizon. And there they were seated in the center of this enormous bizarre and empty concave region.
They sat there for a while barely moving and toyed with the light below, their clawed fingertips absent of mind or intention as they tried to recall how they got there. Only slices and fragments of memories, but they were in a room.... and there was an earthquake? Piercing heat and ringing in the ears. Colors and sparks swam across their vision as though an unseen pressure on closed eyelids. Fear. The door into the room opened and they whipped around to see a friend... someone dear. They were panicked, crying, screaming... They tried to reach out to their loved one in immense pain and desperation. They could only watch as the fur on their friend's coat singed and burned away, skin blistering and peeling rapidly to expose blackening bone, chromatic fire ripping apart the room around them. Chaos screamed, all senses overloaded and everything turned to a blind white.
Nothingness.
They sat there longer, unable and unwilling to recall more details, tears gliding across their cheeks before being absorbed, clumping and matting the previously pristine white and gray patches of fur. No, no... they visibly shook their head at no one. That didn't happen, it was another night terror while they slept, nothing more. Ones like this were nothing new but it felt so real, the despair raw and ravaging...
After some time they decided to get up, their body groaning and creaking as they stood and their expression pinched at the dull aches sewn between each muscle. They gazed up into the sharp white sunlight needling past an unnervingly deep blue patch in the sky; a perfectly circular abnormality mirroring the crater they sat in. They heard the whispers again now, growing louder as this... hole in the sky threatened them with madness. The whispers were without origin and unintelligible, urgent and warning. Gargantuanly tiny and invisible particles began to vibrate menacingly between their eyes and the sky's wound. A deafeningly silent shouting crescendoed as impossible yet familial shapes shifted and warped endlessly. Perceptions and thoughts shrank and expanded simultaneously, methodically dissolving any path to rationalization or sanity-
Something or someone entwined itself around one foot, up their ankle and calf, and began to gently pull. They had not realized they lost contact with the ground nor were aware of the weightlessness that goaded their body upward to be sucked in by this aberration above. They felt the ground press against the pads of their feet, the sensation returning just enough attention for them to sever the sky's devouring insanity.
Gravity abruptly normalized. Unprepared, they staggered and fell onto the warm smooth glass. The beautiful array of color dissipated rapidly out and away from them, disappearing. The comforting presence it gave was gone with it and that fresh sense of where compassionate support used to be but no more was invasive. The glass crater around them was now black and featureless, the hole in the sky didn't beckon, and the whispers went cold and vanished entirely.
This new unwelcoming solitude was dominating in such an alien landscape. They were possibly the only thing within a vast radius around them that breathed or made sound. A small drift of air disturbed the crescent spotted fur across their body, inciting a subtle shiver before it departed. The absence of noise was like a vacuum pulling at the drums in their ears. Nothing moved. They anxiously swished their long bushed tail and flicked their black tipped ears. They were so very confused and afraid but there was only one option they could take now.
Sorely and uncertainly, they chose a random direction and made way to the crater's rim in the horizon.
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