Distant Lands (Spinel x Reader)

Chapter 4

Several times you wake up in the middle of the night, and Spinel is holding you close. You keep falling back asleep in hope she'll shift or move during the night, so you can take your chance to sneak away. Eventually, you wake up again, and surprisingly she's not holding you, but instead softly pressed against your side.

You can hear her breathing in even intervals, and you think she's actually asleep. Huh. So this one sleeps. The only other gems you know sleep are Amethyst, and Steven, although he's half-human so he gets an excuse. You test how much of a light sleeper she is by shifting slightly away from her, careful to not disturb her. Her breathing is still the same, so you guess you're in the clear.

You sit up carefully and glance at Spinel's sleeping face.

She's.. weirdly peaceful, here. Her face looks soft, and her hair has fringe framing around the sides of her face like her pigtails are getting loose. You watch her gem raise and lower slightly, in tune with her breathing. With the fire long gone, the only light is from the moons above, some of the light seeping through the cracks in the stone. You realize you've been staring at her for a while, and move to get up quietly.

Carefully watching her as you move away, you rub your arms from the cold as you walk outside the ruins. It's freezing. Not that you'd admit this to yourself, but you'd rather be next to Spinel right now as she's your only heat source. At least she's useful for something.

Once you're outside, you look up to observe the moons. It's so weird seeing this, honestly. You fill your lungs with the cold, crisp air, and set out to one of the taller hills you saw by the lake you were at earlier. It should only take you twenty minutes or so.

You hope Spinel doesn't wake up while you're gone, but if she does, you could always say that you left to go to the bathroom or something. You should be back in less than an hour. It's seriously so cold that you have to keep warming your hands with your breath, and even that's not doing much. You make a quick pace to try to keep yourself warm because you'd rather not freeze to death out here.

You're only a couple of minutes into your small journey when off to the side of the path ahead of you, you see some rustling in the underbrush, and make a full stop. You hold your breath in to make sure whatever it is, it moved on its own accord, and not because it saw you. You think you see a creature's feet moving around, so you stand very still, hoping it'll leave quickly.

It seems a lot more of the creatures come out in the evening, for some reason, and hide during the day? They can't all be nocturnal. You watch it rustling in the bushes for a few moments, before popping out onto the pathway you're standing on, about twenty feet in front of you. It's uh... It's weird. It's canine in nature and looks kind of like a hyena. There are lots of stripes on the side of its flank, and they look to be three-toed. This guy also seems kind of small - about 2 feet in height, almost like it's a baby.

You hope it's not a baby. Its mother better not be nearby.

Almost like it knows you're there, it snaps its head to you, and it SCREECHES loudly. Oh fuck this, you are not sticking around for whatever comes to these things aid. You break out into a run, the creature squawking and jumping out of your way as you run past it - and you keep running without stopping. You're gonna book it to this hill, and not look behind you.

You're completely out of breath when you finally get to the hill, but thankfully nothing had seemed to chase you. Not that you had turned around to check. There's a single large tree on this hill, and you can see quite a bit of the view around you. You can see your ruins and the lake, and you can also see another structure in the distance by the edge of the jungle, next to those rocky chasms. You should go check that out later. Maybe you can find something useful there, you hope.