Welcome to Somewhere Else

Space

It was getting lonely down in this subterranean area. As I hit what I estimated to be week 3 I made a resolution that one way or another, it was time to finally get out of here. After that resolution I began checking the trapdoor every hour throughout the day and sleeping throughout the night. As time went on, it seemed like I heard less and less voices, less and less activity occurring outside the door. I was reaching a prime moment positioned at a crossroads: I could either intentionally reach out to the people out there or intentionally wait them out then go. Either way, I couldn't breathe, but I also couldn't stay below the ground forever.

One night I tried and tried to fall asleep but simply couldn't, and so I decided to crack open the trapdoor despite knowing it would be pitch dark out. To my surprise, there was still a faint glimpse of light out, but I wagered it wouldn't be there for much longer. I couldn't hear any voices and looked around to check if there was anything of note I could see. Nothing really, though I felt like I could smell a very weak hint of fire coming from somewhere. I closed the door up and went to lay back down again, but alas, I still couldn't fall asleep, so shortly after I tried the door again. The scent of fire was gone and the light was almost completely gone as well. I thought to myself: maybe there was a reason behind my lack of sleep. Maybe it was time. After all, I'd just been waiting here for days now, and in all honesty, it was getting to the point of mere procrastination. I resolved to test the waters. Having just smelled fire and also not knowing if I would need to quickly escape into shadows I prepared a make-shift mask for myself using a wash-cloth I'd stolen from the kitchen area. I took in some air, then hoisted myself above the door and felt like I lost all of the air I'd just taken in in that one motion. A piece of me wanted to step back in, maybe collect some more breath, think, and then plan out where I would try making it to first, even though I knew next to nothing about what was above the ground to form plans with. It didn't matter any way though: right after I made it above the door, it shut itself in and sealed back as if I'd never come out of it. Interestingly it seemed to blend in with the ground around it. I tried pulling on it and it was shut, and here I was, wasting my breath and wasting time. Time to get moving.

I walked and walked in the darkness with nothing around me and very little in sight. I could spot what appeared to be some flowers on the ground and grass but little besides that, and wondered if I'd made the right choice. Dying out here alone seemed pretty grim as I had thought I still had my whole life ahead of me before showing up here. I wondered who, if anyone, would ever find me and what the point of this was. But about 75 seconds in, it occurred to me that while I should have been wearing out of my breath, somehow I was still moving and processing fine. I pulled down my mask to see if I could smell anything, perhaps a whiff of that fire from earlier or a trail that I could follow. I couldn't, but what I could do was breathe. In unbelief and doubt I looked around and tried breathing again and was shocked to find that I indeed could. I jumped up in excitement thinking I'd struck the lottery: I was out from being trapped underground and I could breathe! I was thrilled to finally be free, wondered still where I could be, and then was wonderfully gifted a reminder of that unknown with sounds pouring out from above me—some semblance of screeches.

I looked up and could see nothing but a glow, and it appeared that whatever was making that sound was not as happy as I was about my new presence here. I flipped my mask back up and began running, turning around behind me midway to find the glow was approaching closer and closer to the ground and more importantly, approaching me. I kept running and running and suddenly was surrounded by trees on both sides, yet with the glow coming up ever closer behind me. Out of nowhere I felt a pull that yanked me to the side and threw me from one tree to another, followed by a pull at that tree that did the same. The fourth tree I was pulled to I clung to, hiding behind it, mask up—trying to be as still as possible. The screeching continued for a minute and then the glow ascended back into the sky; I stepped out and looked around me and there was no one anywhere nearby. I looked around the trees themselves and tried to see if there was possibly people doing the flinging but saw no one, even up in the leaves. I had no way to explain what had just happened, but somehow, someone or some *ones* had saved me.

I was now within essentially a hallway of trees, with trees both behind me and in front of me and on both my sides laterally. As I continued along forward I noticed some light coming from the trees themselves, up in the leaves. In addition to the yellow-orange light coming from within them, tiny spores of light seemed to be floating between my eyes as well. It was hitting me that whereever I was, I was indeed far from home. I continued walking down this hallway of sorts and it led to a clear opening that, thanks to the light coming from the trees, I could see was primarily grass, littered with flowers and surrounded by bushes on its other sides. The flowers were a mix of familiarity and foreignness; I saw some apparent sunflowers accompanied by flowers of shapes I couldn't recall having ever seen before. I picked one, placed it in my ear for the heck of it and walked further down the path. The bushes didn't appear overly thorny, so I vaulted over them straight ahead, which left me in a completely clear space that was barren of plants. Within about five minutes of walking I was back on what was obviously a path that had been intentionally established. I began seeing some lights off in the distance that seemed to be clustered near each other: signs of a community?

Now was the moment of truth. Having no clue how I got here, the question still remained as to whether I wanted to get in contact with these people or whether that was the last thing I could want. I had two very different paths I could take and the genuine possibility of failure through either one. Before heading toward the lights I explored a bit more of the area around me, finding no plants that looked like food sources nearby, and screeching noises that I could only reasonably interpret as threats that I'd barely escaped previously. I was probably going to need to meet people at some point if I hoped to survive here.

But as I continued on and got closer to the lights, I saw that it was not a community at all, but a camp. I saw tents sprung around, a campfire in the midst and some pikes planted in the ground... with some sort of animal skull tied around the tops of two of them. The skulls themselves were small but each had two horns that curled in pointing toward the ground and two horns sticking up that looked like they would face no issue mauling whatever this animal would have had issues with. Meaning that whoever killed it would have probably had to have been fierce as well, and judging by the cords sprung between two posts in the ground at what looked to be the entrance of their camp, probably not the friendliest either. Now I'm all for the benefit of the doubt, but I wondered to myself whether this was a time I'd like to put that into practice. Perhaps these were just the people I wanted to see— after all, if I had gotten here through trouble of some kind, perhaps they were people I could band together with. However they didn't seem like the most welcoming folk, and with weapons and skulls being my introduction into their camp here, I didn't exactly think that was something I wanted to look into to find out for sure.

I was fortunately still far enough off to where they couldn't see me, and most of them were probably sleeping anyway. I decided to skirt *by* their camp, keeping a distance to where I wouldn't be seen but could head in that direction, thinking that maybe they were at least camping near something that could be of value to me. After two more hours of walking in the wind of that decision though, I was getting less sure of that postulate every minute. Darkness, and more darkness. Not even trees were near me now, nor even a glow. I simply had to hope I would come into contact with something, and that this time, it wasn't going to be trying to kill me.