UnderHappened

1 - Finn's falling

It's around midnight when Finn finishes stitching up the dummy. Or at least, they think it is. They weren't wearing a watch at the time they fell into the mountain, but they've always had a pretty good perception of time, and even though they can't see the sky, they get the feeling that it's about twelve am.

Eight hours, Finn calculates. Eight hours since they'd made the mistake of venturing too close to a hole in a cliffside.

They're still having a hard time understanding how they'd survived. The fall must've been at least 1,000 - no, 2,000 feet, and Finn had been almost certainly unconscious for a couple hours afterward. They'd woken up to find themself on a bed of golden flowers with barely a scratch, the sky a small circle of pink and yellow light above them. Half-certain they were hallucinating, they'd wandered out of the cave to find the elaborate ruins of some ancient underground city, complete with what seemed to be old riddles and traps and leaves - so many leaves, red leaves, and ivy where there was no sun for ivy to make food out of.

Rather than wasting their time figuring out how that worked, they'd played with the leaves a bit - they were very crunchy - and explored their way into the ruins' old corridors and crumbled rooms. They'd found lots of interesting contraptions and plaques on the walls - written in English, mind you, but not making very much sense either way- and cool built-in pools of clear mountain water under creaky old bridges, but nothing Finn could really relate to - until they'd stumbled into this room and found the dummy.

Finn really, really likes stuffed animals. So when they'd seen the poor creature all ripped up with its fluff scattered everywhere, of course they'd taken the sewing supplies they'd been using in a Drama project out of their backpack and done their best to repair it. They hadn't been able to figure out how to reattach the dummy's base, but they'd fixed up the rest of it, and Finn is honestly pretty proud of how well it turned out, considering they've only just recently learned how to sew.

"There you go, Mr. Dummy," Finn says fondly, making sure to keep their voice quiet so as not to disturb the peace. They pack up their bag, then pick up Mr. Dummy - dear daisies, he's heavy - and prop him up against the wall. They'd like to take him with them, but they know it's wrong to take things that don't belong to them, so they leave him be and continue into the next room.

"That's the biggest dust bunny I've ever seen!" they exclaim, eyes wide, forgetting all about keeping their voice down.

The room itself really isn't very exciting - just another large prism with ivy on the walls and a pathway lined out in pink tile on the floor - but Finn can see into the hallway leading off from it to the right, and there's a giant pile of white dust right splat in the middle of it. It almost looks like flour, but Finn is pretty sure that flour is a surface kind of thing, not a been-sitting-around-under-a-mountain-for-ages kind of thing.

"How did it get that big  though?" Finn wonders, trotting over to it and crouching down on their knees to get a better look. They take off their backpack to compare. Nope, the pile of dust is definitely  bigger.

They fight themselves for a moment, then succumb to the temptation and poke it.

 It's soft, fine, springy, and absolutely nothing like flour whatsoever. 

Finn withdraws their finger, fascinated to find it completely free of dust molecules. They're so busy examining this strange phenomenon that they don't notice the other, much stranger phenomenon happening to the dust pile itself. The dust is... moving, rising into the air, curling and twisting around itself. It starts out as a thin stream, but slowly condenses, moving faster and stronger until Finn can't help but notice, and can't seem to do anything but crouch there and stare at it, mouth open.

And then, without warning, the dust... solidifies, somehow, into a very rounded and peculiar shape, before turning several different shades of pale green and transforming into a giant frog.

"Ribbit."

Finn scrambles backward, tripping over themselves and almost falling flat on their back. The frog is half as tall as they are and five times as large. It also possesses a very odd face and an even odder collection of symbols on its chest.

"You are... very large," Finn whispers, slowly regaining their nerves.

"Ribbit," the frog repeats, this time in a very much offended  tone, then turns and starts hopping away.

"Wait!!" Finn says hastily, suddenly desperate not to miss out on their first encounter with a giant magic frog. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, you're a lovely frog, really-"

But before the frog can react to their plea - if, indeed, the frog can react to a plea - before Finn can do anything else, or get up and chase after it or anything, the world goes pop! and suddenly Finn is back in the room with the dummy, holding it in their arms and attempting to prop it up against the wall.