Bonesplinter Ravine no man is an island entire of itself

He knew he was coming down from the heavens, but he hadn't thought it would be literal.

Hrishikesh roused with a groan, sore and stiff, a throbbing in his temple. He was covered in wet leaves, his agouti coat streaked with mud. Various abrasions littered his body, and a trickle of blood still oozed from a drying wound on his head. He lay sprawled, looking for all the world a dead man.

What a way for this world to greet him!

The god lifted himself to his paws, taking a ginger step forward. It was as if he was intoxicated. The horizon was unsteady; the earth shifted beneath him. One step, then two, three—

What hell had he been sent to?!

There were bones everywhere, some browned with age, others unsettlingly fresh. It was dark despite it being midday, and he could swear he heard the whispers of ghosts. No doubt they lurked here; this was a place of death. 

Hrishikesh searched for an exit, a pathway out. It couldn't come soon enough.

Mature Content Warning

This thread has been marked as mature. By reading and/or participating in this thread, you acknowledge that you are of age or have permission from your parents to do so.

The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: Mentions of suicide.

Brook had failed to rejoin Tortuga, and she had spent the past several months wandering. Now, she'd found herself back in the Teekon Wilds, the place that had been her home twice before, if only ever-so-briefly. Nothing about her life gave her any particular joy, and she had been in that rut of depression and apathy for quite some time. In fact, it was for that reason she was standing at the top of the ravine, looking down into its depths and contemplating just getting it over with. A life like this was not worth living, was it?

As fate would have it, she spotted movement among the bones that scattered the bottom of the ravine, and Brook blinked a few times to make sure she wasn't imagining things. Not because she recognized him, but because he looked like a dead wolf walking. Brook watched from atop her perch, deciding to put off her death for another day.

*shrieks*

He might have missed her, had he not been looking so intently for a way out of here. As it was, Hrishikesh thought he might be seeing things—but no, that was definitely brown against the gray of the rocks, the faint blue of the sky. Decidedly wolf-shaped. He squinted, trying to get a better look.

Arrey, bachcha! the god shouted, his voice bouncing off the walls of the cursed ravine. He smirked to hear himself again, again, again, and then spoke once more. Do you see a path out of this place? Something, anything?

The stranger would be handsomely rewarded should they be of service. He hadn't come here intending to find himself in debt—especially not so soon—but he had been told this world held many quandaries. Being trapped here would only be the first of them.

I'm not dead; I promise.

There was something oddly familiar about his voice, but Brook had been so young when her father left, she did not recognize it. Nor would she in the coming weeks, months, or years. Not on her own, at least. She chalked it up to being a coincidence and him having one of those voices everybody feels like they know.

I was on my way down, but... Well, she hadn't planned on taking a path there. No, her plan had been a much more direct route. I think there's a way over there, she said, gesturing vaguely to her right. It didn't look like the easiest thing in the world to get out, but it was better than the vertical cliffs everywhere else.