Chapter Text
It was a normal Tuesday.
Well, a semi-normal Tuesday. It was midterms week, in grad school, meaning it had been a sleep-deprived nightmare of a day.
Sipping coffee, struggling over setting a decent sleep schedule (again), and resisting the urge to pull out her hair as she faces the very real possibility of another sleepless night as midterms loom closer and closer, a big red ‘X’ on her mental calendar.
It was a normal Tuesday. Past tense.
Next thing she knows, she’s tumbling, flying and screaming before she lands flat on her face into bone chillingly cold water. For one horrifying moment, she worries she'll break her nose against the perfect slap of water, shock filling her alongside the cold. Her arms frantically wave in the tide before she manages to get her head above water, hair sticking to her cheeks and neck.
Gasping, Ariadne sucks in air like it’s her last breath, eyes going wide open as she takes in the cloudy, gray sky, and the water she’s been dropped into. For a moment, a nearly hysterical part of herself begins to think of the Wizard of Oz—then her nose stings, the taste of salt strong as she kicks her feet, trying to move in tandem with the waves but failing as her head goes underneath the tumultuous surf for a moment.
It’s a small miracle that she manages to compose herself enough to close her eyes and regain some sense of balance while bobbing on water that had not been there mere moments ago.
Another scream echoes behind her, and Ari turns fast enough to see the water splash, sputtering as seawater gets into her mouth, before a pale face pops out of the water. The other woman is already cussing, even with salt water pouring out of her mouth, all the while managing to keep her head above the water with more success than Ari.
She is both impressed and jealous of that success.
“What the—“ Water burbles out of her mouth, “Fucking shit— “ The other woman dips underneath the waves, dark hair disappearing in the near-black water before she’s popping back up, wiping at her face and rubbing her eyes before her frantic eyes meet Ari’s own. “Who the fuck are you?”
She opens her mouth to retort, then closes it as what she was about to say dies on her tongue as salty water fills her mouth with another bob in the ocean.
There’s another scream, though this time it’s silenced with a splash before Ari can turn and watch it. God, her arms burn, the push of the waves almost taking her under every time her legs kick at the wrong tempo.
There’s someone coughing to Ari’s left; she turns to see another dark head of hair popping up from the water. She’s sputtering and blinking bright green eyes through her wet fringe, eyes widening when she spots the other two half-drowned women that are struggling to stay afloat.
Ari can recognize this one.
She suddenly has a bad feeling about this.
“Evy?” Ari says, disbelief in her voice. Her stomach drops as that feeling worsens.
The green eyed girl– probably one of her closest friends (if online friend)— blinks rapidly at her. Unlike Ari and the other woman still cursing behind her—“ Fucking shit!”— Evy seems to have more ease in the water than either of them, her movements almost languid as a wave bobs them.
“You— I know you? Ari?” Evy sounds more like she’s asking than stating it, but Ari will take it. Evy turns and spots the other woman splashing behind her, eyes widening. “Lorry?”
Well. That puts a face to the name.
Lorry, Lorraine, is another online friend of Ari’s. What the fuck is going on?
She ignores the hysterical thought building on the back of her mind. There is no way—!
Nope. Not thinking about it.
“Wonderful,” Lorry snarks, wasting no time in splashing past them.
“Everyone is stuck in the ocean with people they know, now let’s fucking exit it—!” She grunts, diving beneath the water as a wave pushes against them, her form disappearing beneath into the water as she heads towards the dark, rocky shore in the near distance.
Ari groans, but starts towards the shore. She’ll get to stop swimming once they reach it, at least.
After what feels like hours of swimming, Ari sits up, her muscles screaming at her as the waves crash around her legs. Lorraine already up and out of the water without preamble.
“Fucking swimming,” she mutters between gasps. “Of course. Not walking or weight-lifting or anything I do more than once a month. Fucking hate this.”
She doesn’t know how the other woman does it, but Lorry wasn’t shy about boasting her fitness in their Discord group when she could. She’s wishing she’d have asked for some tips before she got here, to be honest. Maybe cardio would’ve soothed the steadily growing ache in her limbs.
The beach isn’t sandy, full of flat little pebbles cool to the touch and uncomfortable to sit on as the waves drag across her lap. It reminds her of a beach in Veracruz she visited as a child. She reaches back to untie her hair, already dreading the frizz to come with a vengeance once everything dried. A small part of her hopes it’ll just go extra curly instead, though the humidity in the air douses that hope quickly.
“Oh, wow.” Lorraine says, dark eyes wide as she glimpses down the rocky shoreline and turns her head up to the cloudy sky. The gloomy expanse is full of seagulls, chattering at each other like quarreling spouses. She points towards the gathering of dark clouds further out, her eyebrows raised. “We’re lucky we didn’t end up out there. See that squall line?”
Ari looks, but everything is just dark clouds to her.
“I am kinda rusty on my ocean-things terminology, so please remind me, what is a squall line, again?”
Lorry opens her mouth to start what will probably be a long and winding tangent about clouds and squalls—but is already distracted by something else in the cliffs ahead.
Ari shakes her head, sighing and pushing her torso up, pebbles shifting under her hands as she turns to look at Evy, who’s gasping for air like a fish, starfished as they stare at the sky.
“You okay?” She calls, Evy responding with a shaky, pale thumbs up.
“We should probably dry off,” Lorraine says, turning to Ari with a ready hand that she takes without hesitation, surprised by the other woman’s strength as she pulls her up without a blink.
“You weren’t bluffing,” Ari remarks, poking at Lorry’s bicep.
Lorry blinks at her, dark brows furrowing. “What?”
“That you’re strong. I thought you were just exaggerating.”
Lorry reaches back behind herself, wringing out her dark hair before shaking her hands dry. There are goose-bumps along her arms. “The only thing I exaggerate about is this ass.”
Ari coughs to hide a laugh as her eyes drop, thenreturn to Lorry’s face.
“Well, acceptance is the first step of healing,” she says, a small smile dancing on her lips as she turns towards Evy and hefts her up. Behind her, she can hear Lorry’s exaggerated, scandalized gasp, followed by snickering.
“Bitch.”
“Why, thank you,” hums Ari.
Evy flops over in her arms, groaning, green eyes fluttering behind pale eyelids. “This isn’t real.”
“It’s very much real,” Ari huffs as Evy leans her weight on her. “C’mon, up you get.”
“Nooooo!” Evy paws her hand at her, Ari jerking her head away from cold fingers as her friend then stumbles out of her grasp. “I’m going to wake up at home, in my bed, warm.”
“Warming up these nuts,” Lorry snickers, ignoring the glare Ari shoots at her.
“If this wasn’t real I wouldn’t be here, I would be crying about high level economics and procrastinating,” Ari comments idly as she sets her hands on her hips. “And I’m very much here. I’d rather be crying.”
Lorry squats, picking up a few pebbles. “And where is here? I live in a goddamn desert.” She gestures to Evy, who has a growing look of dread on her face as she continues on, swinging her arm, the pebbles flying into the ocean. “Evy lives in Florida—this looks like the Oregon coast. Or Washington.”
Oh. She has to say it, doesn’t she? She might be wrong, but she’ll never get another opportunity to say it.
Fuck it. Carpe Diem.
“It doesn’t look like Virginia, either,” Ari admits, as her eyes wander to the shadows of trees in the distance. Trees that she shouldn’t be able to see, because she is fucking blind without her glasses.
Shelving that particular freak out for later, she turns to her friends.
“Well, Toto 1, Toto 2, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
“Oh my god.” Evy mutters. Lorry begins to derail, her eyes turning towards the sky as theories of just where they could be sprout from her mouth.
“This sure as shit isn’t Lake Mead.” Ari’s head swims as Lorraine puts down another finger. “Nor is it California.”
“We’ve been isekai’d,” Evy says, tone almost wry as she begins to wring her hair out and look around.
Lorraine pauses, dark brows furrowing together as she wrinkles her nose at the term. “Ew. Don’t say that. Just say transmigrated.”
“And that’s not likely,” Ari is quick to add, grimacing at the idea. “This isn’t fanfiction , E.”
The bad feeling returns with a vengeance.
Ari makes the executive decision to ignore it, for her sanity’s sake.
“Neither is being dropped into the ocean when you were about to settle in for some Minecraft parkour, but life gives you lemons. Cold, wet, bone-chilling lemons,” Evy replies, shivering as if to punctuate her point. “Regardless, we need to make a shelter. If we don't get out of these wet clothes, and it gets cold, we’ll be in for more serious problems. Like pneumonia.”
“Shouldn’t getting help be more important?” Ari asks, eyeing their surroundings. She can’t see a trace of society anywhere on the beach, though it could be a private one, or close to a military base.She really hopes it’s not the latter. That would be weird to explain, and very criminal if they weren’t believed to have washed up.
“My primer on surviving in the wilderness hasn’t been updated since camping was invented, but isn’t the point to try not to stay in the wilderness?” She asks.
“If you know where the wilderness isn’t around here, be sure to share,” Evy says idly, looking around.
“When help isn’t immediately available you take care of yourself to your best ability,” Lorry says. “We’re lucky none of us are injured. Very lucky.”
“Give me a few, I’m sure I will manage to trip on something,” Ari mutters under her breath as she looks at the rocky outcrops surrounding them.
Yeah, that is not going to end well for her.
“And we’ll keep it that way if we get a fire and some shelter,” Evy says, walking towards a less cliffy part of the shore, leading up into a grove of trees. Evy grimaces and shakes her running shoes once she notices the squeaks they make, soaked as they are.
“Weren’t you a prepper at some point?” Ari asks, following and carefully avoiding sharp rocks under her bare feet. Why couldn’t it be a sandy beach? Most beaches are sandy. And have the decency not to try and cut her damn feet open. This beach doesn’t even have the decency to look nice, all barren and gray.
“I can’t be blamed for my hyperfixations. It so happened at thirteen that preparing for the end of the world was mine,” Evy grumbles.
“Mine was lying online to old men.” Lorry adds, unhelpfully.
Ari sighs, the edges of a headache already beginning. “Of course it was.”
Lorry turns her head, an affronted look on her face as she looks Ari up and down. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Evy cuts in before Lorry starts bristling. “It means you were thirteen. Now go find something we can burn. We need to warm up.”
Lorry squints, flopping onto the rocks, making a grand show of complaining, but is then up on her feet and headed down the shore, sharp eyes looking for driftwood; barring that, heading into the trees that skim the edges of the beach.
Evy turns to say something, but her eyes look down to Ari’s shoeless feet.
“Oh,” Evy says, suddenly concerned. “You stand there and don’t move, if you don’t mind. I don’t want you to hurt your feet on something.”
Ari rolls her eyes, poking at Evy. “Don’t worry about me, child, I've walked barefoot on a beach before. What do you need done?”
“I’m nineteen! Freshly a very big and even older adult as of two weeks ago!” Evy says, waving her hands for emphasis. “But, regardless, I think we need to set up an area to camp in. Preferably not on the beach, the winds risk blowing the fire out.”
Feeling rather magnanimous, she chooses not to touch upon the fact that nineteen years old is still a baby. She can bother E about it later, something tells Ari they’ll have time for that later.
“Right, then we trail after Lorry into the trees?” Asks Ari, eyes turning to follow said short woman already edging onto it.
“Er, yeah. Probably. I dunno how high tide gets here, but that area seems to edge uphill enough that we’ll probably be fine. Trees don’t grow well in places where saltwater is always touching,” Evy says, eyes scanning their area once again, before pointing to the left of what lies in front of them, not too far from where Lorry is bending down and picking at what seems to be sticks.
“We’ll settle there. It’ll be hard to start a fire without a lighter or something but I remember the other ways.”
Ari just nods, feeling way out of her depth here. She’s not really a camper, or a hiker. Her idea of a good day out’s a trip to a museum, and now. Well.
They’ll get rescued. They just need to get dry first, like the others said. She trusts that they’ll be fine.She has to trust. Otherwise, she doesn’t know how she’ll cope.
Evy is mumbling something about fire starters and wondering aloud if she could find any flint around here as they walk. Apparently, it’s been a while since she had to look for any.
Probably. They’ll probably be fine.
Evy has enough knowledge to get them through the basics (and maybe more), Lorry is a nursing student with real trauma care knowledge, and Ari is willing to help and learn where she can. So, between them, she’s sure that they’ll have a good (if shaky) foundation to survive on. That’s better than nothing.
She leaves Evy to do her thing, following Lorraine’s lead and helping pick up sticks. Leaves, too, when she can find dry ones. She remembers something from somewhere mentioning needing tinder or a fire-starter to really make a campfire.
That, or she was just making things up.
Things move fast. Before she knows it, there’s a few splinters in her hands and she's squatting in front of their rudimentary campfire. Lorry’s instructions are calm and precise, quick to fix any supposed mistakes Ari misses.
“How do you know this? Evy is supposed to be the survival guide,” Ari jokes, placing some of her leaves between the sticks.
“I live in a desert,” Lorry states, her hands pausing as she stares down the shoreline. “Or did. High school parties in the middle of nowhere weren’t uncommon.”
Ari tries to imagine that , but can’t really come up with an image beyond sprawling sand dunes and pimply-faced kids. It makes her want to laugh. Then again, her social life in high school was pretty lackluster, so she really can’t judge.
“In the sand?”
“Dunes were too far out.” Lorry hums. “Rocky desert, Rocky Mountains.”
She still can’t picture it, but takes Lorry’s word for it as the bushes rustle and out comes Evy, a grin plastered on her face as she holds up a sharp-edged rock.
“I found flint!” Evy announces proudly, waving it. “Unfortunately for us, that was the easy part. Now we sort of get to smack flint against my very lucky pocket knife until the sparks decide to take pity on us and ignite.”
“You have a knife on you?” Lorry asks, one eyebrow raised.
Evy huffs incredulously, pulling said knife out of the pocket of her black sweatpants.“I always have a knife on me. I have boobs and a pretty face, it’s a must.”
“Wait, fair.” Lorry turns her head towards Ari. “I used to have a purse axe.”
“What—“
“I think I remember you mentioning that once,” muses Evy.
“I just had a taser; why didn’t you both just have a taser?” Ari asks, incredulous, if amused.
“Because tasers are for babies,” Lorry answers, just as Evy goes, “because my taser stays in my car.”.
“See? Point proven!” Lorry gestures to the youngest of the group, happy her point was made. Evy, for her part, doesn’t deign the comment with a response, crouching down by their firewood and fiddling with the tinder they found.
It’s dry grass yanked from the ground by the trees.Seems to be up to Evy’s standards, because she doesn’t complain.
Evy huffs again, striking the flint with the unsharpened edge of her knife. “Alright you two, settle in, ‘cause this’ll take a while.”
To their shared shock, the embers that spark off of the strike land on the tinder and immediately take, flames quickly turning the grass into dark embers.
“Oh, shit, wait– what the hell?” Evy says to herself, quickly setting down the flint and edging the tinder closer to her smaller sticks and more dry grass, that lighting as well. “That’s never happened before.”
“Lucky day,” Lorry remarks, tossing in a stick.
“Weird fucking day,” Evy says back. “I wouldn’t call our unscheduled swim lucky.”
“Unlucky day with highlights,” Ari supplies, seating herself on the beach.
And with that, they all settle in, the fire crackling as it slowly grows, until a piece of driftwood noisily cracks. Ari marvels at how the two of them seamlessly ignore the fact that none of them have ever met in person before, easily falling into relaxed banter as they lean towards the warmth of the fire.
It’s startling. Almost as startling as falling from the sky and landing in an ocean but—they’re real. Online friends were easy to think of as pixels on a screen sometimes. You didn’t see them all the time, and some, like Lorry, were quick to come and go for months at a time.
Evy’s witty banter and jokes are on target for her usual self, which Ari is used to. But her green eyes are brighter in real life than in photos.
It's almost hard to really look away when she speaks with how easily they spark with mirth. In comparison, Lorry looks almost bored or tired, dark eyes half-lidded as a smirk curls at the edges of her lips. It’s foreign, the familiarity of their words and the strangeness of seeing them spoken aloud.
Lorry is more subtle with her facial expressions, but she talks with her hands and shifts a lot. Meanwhile, Evy nods along and has no qualms about scrunching up her face at something Lorraine says.
“That’s stupid.”
“Okay, but I’m right.” Lorry insists.
Waves break across the shore, pebbles rattling as they turn over and roll over one another. Above them, there’s the beginning circle of hungry seagulls, white against the darkening sky.
“We have a likelier probability of falling into some freak wormhole and are probably in Oregon or something.”
“ Or, we could’ve been transmigrated into another world. Y’know.”
“Don’t recite the old text to me, witch, I was there when it was written,” Evy scoffs, snickering. Her face falls into a deadpan. “No, but seriously, if this is like that I would actually be so pissed. I never should’ve written so many self-inserts.”
“I wouldn’t.” Lorry says a bit too quickly before pausing. “Wait. Maybe I would.”
“Oh, I know I would be pissed. All the Self-Inserts I ever wrote took place in places where people are like: human rights? No, human wrongs. I would go nuts living anywhere near Game of Thrones,” Ari admits easily, throwing another stick into the fire with mild glee.
“They don’t have toilets in half the places we’ve written for either,” Evy huffs.
“Make a bidet.”
“With what.”
At that, Lorry shrugs. Evy rolls her eyes. “So helpful.”
The other woman preens, half of her hair already dry as she shifts closer to the fire. “I try.”
They all fall silent then, the hush of the sea filling in the silence alongside the crackling of the fire. Ari doesn't want to think too much on where they could be, but she also can’t ignore the anxiety churning in her gut.
What if they really did isekai or transmigrate or whatever it was? What if they're in some post-apocalyptic world or some shitty medieval high fantasy full of bullshit and dragons like Game of Thrones? Then what? Lorry would nag and spout lore knowledge on everything she knows—the damn woman was an encyclopedia—while Evy would firmly place her foot down and vote on staying clear of anything plot-related.
And herself?
Well. That is more complicated. She would like to believe that she would do the right thing and want to help, but she is scared . Scared of what it means to be in a medieval world where morality is optional. Worried about whether she will be useless and drag the others down with her.
Ari is scared that she is going to find herself in a situation where she could do the good she has been desperately studying to do, but do nothing.
She is scared of discovering her resolve is weaker than her cowardice.
Her lips thin as she tosses the stick she used to stoke the fire, watching it slowly curl in and glow red– until it snaps in half, embers washing above the fire.
“Alright.” Evy says, slapping her thighs as she stands up. “We got to get dry.”
“I’m so lucky I wasn’t asleep when we dropped,” says Lorry , taking off her sweatpants without hesitation, laying them out next to the fire. Next is her tank top, the woman unshy as she stretches out on the pebbles in her underwear. “I sleep naked.”
“Oh yeah, that would be bad. It looks like we are somewhere that gets cold fast, too,” Ari comments as she looks around. “If this is an isekai, hopefully we are lucky enough to be somewhere where it doesn’t snow.”
Evy groans.
“Don’t jinx us. Anyone see some wood to knock on? I am not playing games with the universe right now. I’ll cut somebody.”
Evy shuffles around to find a stick to hit her knuckles against, while Lorry leans back, unbothered by her predicament.
“Luckily, we’re all ladies.” Lorry shrugs, flipping a nonchalant hand towards Evy. “Theydies.”
“Theydies nuts,” Evy mutters, following Lorry’s lead and pulling off her shirt, laying it next to the fire. “C’mon, Ari, you’re going to get pneumonia.”
“We’re probably hypothermic,” Lorry comments unhelpfully, dark eyes wide as she turns her head towards the two of them. “Just saying.”
“Give me a second, I am trying to remember if this was my bra with a broken hook or not,”mutters Ari as she begins taking her sweater off.”
She didn’t want to be sick when the closest thing to a doctor was a half-finished nursing student with questionable morals and quotes—that were her own—on how horrible her bedside manner was.
Ari didn’t think that Lorry should be a nurse, but she knew the other woman well enough to believe she might actually have her head screwed on right. Sometimes. It was just hard to remember when half of her friend’s default personality was ‘painfully extroverted’ with a side of ‘unmedicated ADHD.’
“Thanks,” Ari says dryly, peeling off her tank top and bra with a grunt. Cool air immediately blasts her back and she shifts closer to the fire with a sigh.
It’s almost nice.
“Once we’re mostly dry we need to find shelter,” Evy says, stretching and unbothered by the sudden lack of clothes among them. “I can make one out of tree limbs and whatever, but a natural shelter would be preferred. Less work, and more protection from the wind coming in from the sea.”
“What kind of shelter could be around here?” Ari asks aloud. “A cave would be too strange. Are caves really a thing you can stumble into?”
Evy shrugs. “I live in Florida, dude. Caves aren’t really our thing unless you count the underwater ones scuba divers pay to almost die in.”
“I respect that,” Lorraine says. “It’s not a tourist trap if it can’t kill them.”
“Yeah, those caves in Cancun sure proved that, what else should we be looking for?” Ari asks.
“Overhangs in the cliffs that could protect from rain, abandoned shacks; I dunno, man,” Evy says with a shrug. “And caves, like you said. But be wary that all the stories about bears and caves are true and my pocket knife won’t exactly be effective on them.”
“Ah, yes, wildlife. My least favorite kind of life,” Ari sighs as she stretches her sore arms.
“Don’t worry, I could kill a bear,” Lorry says, flexing her arm. Ari eyes her for a second, then shrugs.
“I both believe you and would be willing to pay to see it.”
“Let’s not test that theory, shall we?” Evy says, tone drier than the Sahara. “But anyways, we’ll set out with the extra firewood and find somewhere safe to stay for the night. Y’all agree with that?”
“No complaints here,” Ari says with a thumbs up. “It’s past my bedtime, and I need a nappy nap.”
Lorraine runs her fingers through her dark hair, leaning as close to the fire as she can without risking torching her hair. “Many. Except, none that I can think of at this very second. I’ll keep you updated.”
And with that, they soak in the warmth while they can, before the search begins. In the distance, the sky rumbles, and from the way the clouds are looking, they may not be able to enjoy being dry for long.
They find a shallow cave that is really more of the underside of an overhanging cliff, half of it wet and half of it dry as rain batters down above them. Lorry is darting past her, arms full of the sticks and driftwood she collected earlier, sandals slapping against the stoney ground.
“Good thing we found this.” Evy remarks, setting down her own bundle of sticks with a sigh.
Ari hums in agreement, taking a look over their surroundings. The trees are tall and dark, their leaves shivering from the ocean wind as the grass beneath her tickles her feet. She has to look where she is going, unlike Evy or Lorry who have somehow managed to keep their shoes on, even after falling from the sky and swimming churning waters.
She’s jealous, really. She had a perfectly good pair of house slippers that would’ve done the trick, even if they weren’t meant for trekking in the wilderness.
Turning her head upwards, she squints at the gray sky, eyes burning as they accommodate to the light—
“Guys,” She hears the two of them pause from behind her, shifting her gaze to the very clear view in front of her. “I don’t have my glasses on.”
What the actual fuck .
Lorry huffs, “I thought you were going to say something important. Like, ‘watch out, there’s a bear’, or something.”
“No wait, that is important.” There’s the strike of flint against metal as Lorry hisses, the clattering of sticks and Evy’s snorting laughter playing out behind her as Ari’s head begins to swim.
“Ari and I are fucking blind.”
“Evy and I are blind.” Their voices meld into one as they speak simultaneously. The other girl blinks at her with wide eyes, a grin spreading across her face.
“Jinx!” Evy crows. Ari shoots her an amused look and sticks her tongue out.
Lorry huffs at the two of them. “Yeah, and I have an astigmatism that is very much—”
Ari turns around, staring at Lorry, who has one eye closed and her mouth wide open as the scene before her is presumably clearer. None of them hit their heads too hard, did they? Could they have shaken themselves up a bit in the fall and somehow miraculously cured themselves?
“Not possible,” Evy denies, leaning towards the growing fire in front of her as she blows into it, some browned leaves in her hand. “That’s literally some stupid game-logic. We are very much real, thank you very much. Ask the nurse.”
Ari blinks. Did I say that out loud?
“Student. I am still a student. And yes, you did.” Lorry plops down next to the fire, dark hair spilling out against the dirt ground as she stretches out and curls a bit too close to the fire for Evy’s liking, the other girl poking her with a stick to get her to roll away.“But yeah, they’re right. Unless you’ve had LASIK—which, I’m assuming none of us did—your vision isn’t going to be miraculously cured.”
Right. And she wasn’t seeing clearly.
Well, looks like she might be right. Kansas is probably nowhere close to where they are.
“I can literally see you from here.” Ari points out, gesturing between the two of them.
“Congratulations.” Lorry replies drolly, “Let’s not think about that more than we need to. I don’t have a medical textbook or Google at hand to figure out what the fuck is going on with our heads or eyes, for that matter.”
“Ignorance is bliss.” Evy pokes at Lorry again, but this time a smirk curls up on her lips as Lorry snatches the thing away and tosses it into the fire.
She grimaces, but chooses to keep quiet. Ignorance might be bliss, but if they really got yeeted into another dimension, it might also mean an early death.
Suddenly, something shifts .
Evy curses, sliding away from the fire as if the earth itself had tilted from underneath her. She can make out Lorry’s tumbling form, springing up on all fours as her ears pop and her senses tell her that there is something very, very wrong here. Ariadne is rolling away from the two of them, one of her hands desperately clawing at something, anything , as everything seems to shake and move at once.
There’s a terrible crack, Ari whipping her head towards the hunched forms of her friends as fear starts to settle in like a cloud. Oh fuck. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck—
Her ears are ringing, head lolling this way and that as the trees and ground all become one great moving blur. She can feel the hum , just under her skin, tree branches rattling above as the wind screams overhead, the smell of burning hair and orchids filling her sinuses as she feels her stomach swoop.
Then, everything goes still.
“What the fuck--” Lorry’s voice breaks into a scream, Ari squeezing her eyes shut as the other woman crashes into her. She can hear Evy’s choked off cry as everything begins anew, her heart pounding in her ears as Lorry tumbles off of her.
“We need to move!” She roars, the wind swallowing her words as she struggles to get up, her arms shaking as an ominous ‘SNAP’ echoes above them.
Dirt flies into her mouth as she scrambles, the splintering bark on the stick barely even processing as it digs into her palms. It grounds her a little more, her eyes whipping towards Evy, who is hunched into herself with her hands over her head, still close to their smothered fire (or what was left of it) as the world breaks apart.
Ari watches as the clouds grow darker and closer, the trees bending and creaking ominously as the wind continues to howl. Fear grows in her, then, something primal and instinctive, everything in her screaming, telling her to turn and flee from whatever was happening.
Everything bows inward, time falling still as she stares with wide eyes at the hole in front of her.
There’s a terrible screech, Ari dropping the stick to clasp her hands over her ears as gravity bears down over them all.
And then everything stops.
Ari watches the sky just above a few bushes by their camp tear, the space above bowing outward before it slams back into place, reverberating, spitting something out like slime through a tube– something shouting in pain falling into thin, brittle boughs, twigs snapping and cracking as the object barrels through, landing on an aggressively thorned bush with a thump.
Lorry, as always, is the first to speak.
“...Is that Bones?”