Trying to avoid stagnation with my characters. This is AW! @Saghani can invade all his threads whenever. If nobody responds I'll make it a read-only since its so weird lmfao.
It took a few days to climb down the side of the mountain, even though the ridge was well defined and wide enough for the two of them. Neither the boy nor the shadow wished to be parted; they were constantly touching, as if attached by the shoulder, and would bed down together at the bottom of the ridge line come darkness. The plains reached out from beneath the mountain, which cast its own shadow across the foreign land. When the two of them were settled, Tryphon fell in to a fitful sleep -- or so he thought.
The warmth provided by Saghani was fleeting; as he drifted in to a half-sleep, something in his mind gave way. Physically he was rooted to the spot, wrapped in a ball next to the shadow, but mentally, he roamed.
He was awake (no, he wasn't), and Saghani was gone from his side. The shadows had grown long around him, reaching in to infinity, and then quite suddenly there was an eruption of white noise -- no, not noise, just snow. Beneath was darkness, above there were flecks of ice falling from nowhere, catching upon his fur; and Tryphon was standing, watching with his head raised. There was a glimmer of light, like the sun through the clouds, but he couldn't quite make sense of that -- in his dream he was standing, but in life, he was on his feet and walking. The plains drifted by him as he kept a sluggish pace.
The snow had turned to rain. He felt nothing, but could smell the petrichor as the water hit the soil -- the shadow -- and little by little, the rain collected to form a river between his feet. A line that divided and expanded. Soon he had to side-step to avoid being split in two -- and the river became something large, alive, and ethereal. It spanned his entire vision, rolling and crashing at his toes. Tryphon noticed that there was no sound here. The ocean before him was limitless but empty, except -- as he walked in life, he tripped himself with slow steps, and -- the ocean's eyes watched him, its mouth opened, and he felt a wave of vertigo as his body fell forwards in to the darkness of a great black pit
Tryphon landed squarely on his face in the dirt. Around him was the hillside, the tall grasses of the plains, and the melting snow. He had walked almost clear across the plains until this point; the sensation of being swallowed by the sea remained with him, although details from the dream faded quickly. He was panting heavily, and looked up from the dirt with a stunned expression -- wondering where he was, where Saghani had gone, and why he had awakened so far from her side.
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