Heron Lake Plateau its easy to get hungry when you ain't got shit to lose.

Open to @Niamh since it's in her den, but others are welcome. Skip to the italics if you just wanna reply to him waking up! Forward-dated to June 11th.

There was nothing left.

He woke up again, and there was nothing there, no memory of the hours previous - of the days, months, maybe even years, spent traversing the incongruent universe that had sprung up around him. There was only this exact moment and before this Screech could only assume he had been asleep. There was nothing wrong. He was tired — no, he was thirsty — but the sensation was so vague that he quickly forgot about it.

The boy didn't feel out of place here, laying where he did, exposed on a hillside with waves of tall grass all around him. This was home — he did not doubt that the world he saw was merely a figment; something built in haste from trauma. It was so real. All of it — from the crashing waves of an impossible sea to the apple-tree-clouds, to the sight of Towhee running through the lake's shallows, to Raven with her children, and the strangers — the dark man and the angry red woman — -   --- -

The bits and pieces came back to him as his sleep dissipated. Yes, he could remember after all. There were many things lodged in his memory (these things that could not be) and Screech wanted to believe that this was truly the way the world was meant to be (these ghosts, calling for you).

He could hear singing, suddenly. It carried across the waving field of wheat, and so he unfurled his tightly coiled body and began to investigate - weaving in and out of the grass - until the singing grew louder. The sound of the grass shifting around him with the wind currents was loud, too. Soon the two stopped being separate - it was like the wind was singing, and the grass applauded.

There was something in front of him but he couldn't make it out. A shadow in the grass that was there, but then it wasn't. He heard laughter - sharp like birdsong, high and feminine, vaguely familiar - and delved through the sea of grass after it. The sound grew faint; he felt a quickness in his body, a racing to his heart that made his blood burn.

Screech tried to keep chasing that sound - but as it grew faint, it grew deep. Soon there wasn't laughter on the wind at all and he only heard the shifting of the grass, and the muscles of his legs felt so weak; they trembled, and he felt as if he could not stand. As he collapsed to the dirt (that wasn't there before -) he watched as the soil seemingly erupted around him, and the resulting dust cloud enveloped him. It filled his lungs. It weighted down his splayed limbs. 

He was c h oki ng — -

And with a final gasp, something swept in from outside of the cloud and pierced the scruff of his neck; he was aware of a sharp pain, and then a freedom as the ground slipped out beneath his body. No, that wasn't it — Screech saw his body, it was underneath him, and receding quickly, The grass stopped swaying, becoming a placid field of gold, and he kept on drifting up, up, up u p —

—He heard the sound of a hawk screeching, and bolted upright as if from a nightmare.

Towhee was standing over him and her friend X was soaring overhead, calling out in place of her voice; she stared down at him with a sullen expression — but then her voice arrived, except it was deeper than it should've been. There was no accent to her voice, no impediment, except a lack of emotion as she said, If you leave now, we'll never forgive you.

He knew that, though. He feared that.

If you must go, then go. Another voice arrived, it was not as judgemental as Towhee's but it was deep as well, and Screech could recognize it as Colt even before the man's body arrived beside his sister. He seemed just as lethargic; he looked old, like Finley looked old with her faded pelt, and it was then that Screech realized they both looked so worn and tired. They looked how he felt.

I don't want to, he wanted to say. Colt answered without moving his lips, It might be for the best.

No, he tried to say, feeling a tension in his jaw as if he were gritting his teeth but that went against what he willed, and Screech felt that panic well up inside of him again. That heat in his blood. NO, he wanted to shout, and rose up to his feet, shaking his head.

Why couldn't he speak? He should've been able to speak like them — but why didn't their mouthes move? This wasn't right. He shouldn't be hearing them -- —

He's getting it. Another voice, this one from behind him, so he spun to face the interloper with hackles bristling, and found himself face-to-face with the one eyed man from before. The red woman slunk along beside him, clicking her tongue against her teeth as if she is dissapointed. It might be too late, she mentions.

Too late?

Too late for what?

What's changed? She says next, and diverts her attention to Screech in a way that makes him stop his fussing. There is a sharpness to her expression, she looks at him shrewdly, and slips closer as if to give him a look over. So pathetic, this one. The rest were better - Stoat was better, and she only lived for moments. The woman paused and stared him down — challenging him, eye to eye — and then reached up with her pointed face and plucked at his eye. With one birdlike motion that golden thing was on the ground, and she was stepping on it.

It didn't hurt — it didn't hurt because he knew, somehow, that this had already happened. That he wasn't meant to have two - that mouthes were meant to be open - that these people weren't supposed to be here. Ah, but they both cut in now, sharing one voice: Not us, they said in unison, We are meant to be here, because we are nowhere. You - you should not be here.

You should go home. 

He frowned, but felt a yearning for something - answers, understanding, safety --

Go home, they commanded, and he winced back from their booming, overlapping voice.

-- family -

-—- thirst y

GO H—

Screech felt a desperate and greedy need overtake him as he woke up, and while he felt pressured by this deep desire to get on his feet and go, as soon as his eyes opened he felt only a pounding in his head —

And that's when he realized he was awake, laying within the confines of a den layered with feathers and flowers, and he moaned piteously as the hunger and thirst descended upon him. There was no telling how much of the past week he remembered; but he was a hollow person, now. His body had withered since the incident, and he could barely lift his head to ask for help.