When he came to there was a heavy layer of snow across his back and a numbness to everything. The shadows had parted some time ago; there was no sign of the ghost either, and had he been in a better state of mind Screech might've been glad. A mental image flashed through his weary little brain: a glimpse of Vaati's face before everything had gone so awry.
A bloodied mess.
Screaming.
A dark shape sweeping towards the ghost - he saw it through his luxated eye, although now there was only darkness.
Maybe that dark shape hadn't targeted Vaati at all and had been intended for him? Screech's thoughts weren't so linear nor so active; he remained sitting in the snow for some time while bits and pieces of the past few hours came back to him.
He was a mess; the fresh snow had covered him up pretty well but it hadn't washed away all of the blood. A garish pink outline framed the spot his face had landed. His cheek was soaked through and had become crusted with brown ice. He didn't feel the pain of his injury yet - the season had protected him so far from all of that, numbing everything. But he was shivering and slow because of it.
When the boy did finally gather enough of his wits to get to his feet he couldn't help but sway, stagger, and then fall repeatedly. His sense of balance had been corrupted. Seeing only darkness - carrying that with him now, always - would take some time to adapt to. The full weight of the trauma had not registered yet, but the voice of one of the sisters still reverberated in his mind and, with one final glance through the Heartwood with his remaining eye squinting against the light, he remembered that he could not go home.
Screech struggled to orient himself on the correct path and, with some troubleshooting, began his northerly dispersal from the woods.
A bloodied mess.
Screaming.
A dark shape sweeping towards the ghost - he saw it through his luxated eye, although now there was only darkness.
Maybe that dark shape hadn't targeted Vaati at all and had been intended for him? Screech's thoughts weren't so linear nor so active; he remained sitting in the snow for some time while bits and pieces of the past few hours came back to him.
He was a mess; the fresh snow had covered him up pretty well but it hadn't washed away all of the blood. A garish pink outline framed the spot his face had landed. His cheek was soaked through and had become crusted with brown ice. He didn't feel the pain of his injury yet - the season had protected him so far from all of that, numbing everything. But he was shivering and slow because of it.
When the boy did finally gather enough of his wits to get to his feet he couldn't help but sway, stagger, and then fall repeatedly. His sense of balance had been corrupted. Seeing only darkness - carrying that with him now, always - would take some time to adapt to. The full weight of the trauma had not registered yet, but the voice of one of the sisters still reverberated in his mind and, with one final glance through the Heartwood with his remaining eye squinting against the light, he remembered that he could not go home.
Screech struggled to orient himself on the correct path and, with some troubleshooting, began his northerly dispersal from the woods.
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