Heron Lake Plateau your shadow weighs a ton

formatting is a bit wonky but i didnt know what word to use so its just like... choose your own adventure! or something. im tired. idk. flaps hands.

In this new reality where things happened slowly and deliberately, where the passage of time took aeons, and where he was left to suffer endlessly through recovery at a seemingly stationary rate, there was little he could do but let things unfold. The stranger knew this by now. He knew he couldn't understand the white noise. That he was weaker than he should've been. That the girl with Niamh's face — and the other one, Ceara, who should've been a pile of ashes — they were not real. They were not alive. Yet when confronted with the obvious fact that this girl — this Niamh look-alike — was real it had been a confusing discovery. She was solid, she was hurting, and the longer he lingered at her side the more firm that belief became.

But it wasn't until the dark shape took form, striding towards the den mouth and then veering towards both Niamh and the prone stranger, that he really understood; perhaps his inability to connect with her had been because he'd thought of her only as a figment. Maybe, too, he reacted to her slowly and with concern because she was real, and it was hard to grasp that the withering, burning, vanishing death he had witness had been the falsehood.

The shadow swept in close; he could hear sounds, make out some words, but it was Niamh's tearful begging that roused something from Screech's body. He was exhausted from the trek outside of the den, confused by the arguments that surrounded him and filled Screech's ears like booming chaos; but it was the sight of Niamh begging and crying that finally brought about a response: the creature within felt the threat of the dark figure and, cushioned in an instinctive loathing of the shadows he had been fighting in his dream-state, the stranger reacted by standing and lunging between the girl of light and the strange specter — lips pulled back to expose teeth that flashed brightly in the sunlight, and a beastly roar erupted from the mindless boy, eager to stop the darkness from returning to take her light away again.

This was no shadow, but he was unable to tell the difference — so it was that the stranger piloted Screech's body, and the full brunt of his many teeth, towards his [leader, sister, mother,] he once loved so dearly.