Northstar Vale And nobody owes you now

On more than one occasion he thought he was imagining all of it. The flight from Undersea, the cave so spontaneously discovered, the beast within it. Sometimes he thought he smelled water — salty like the sea, or at least the taste of minerals — but the boy was too frightened to explore the corridors. He yearned for the sight of the open sky. Visits from Maegi. He wanted to play with Seelie's children, run along the beach, no longer nervous of the thought of the water.

The sea would've been favorable to this — this unending blackness, this void, which had swallowed him up. Mou mourned the loss of his life; he couldn't focus for long on anything anymore, not with the migraine and the weakness set within him, but he was pitiful indeed.

The one constant reminder that he wasn't dreaming was the sound of claws upon the stone behind him. Sometimes it felt like there were eyes on him, or the heavy breath of something foul and otherworldly ready to pluck the life from him. The darkness wasn't so frightening when he lived half his life within it; rather, the indications that he wasn't alone were bone-chilling.

As he slipped along, he came upon a gap in the earth and without thinking, wedged himself against it. The corridor narrowed and began to grow steep as it ascended, and he was stuck awkwardly hoisting himself upon narrow shelf after narrow shelf. He thought the ground had grown damp suddenly, and paused to sniff the shadows.