Distant Lands (Spinel x Reader)

Chapter 13

You shout as you slide down with the moving soil as if anyone can even hear you, attempting to grab anything for purchase - but your hands can only grasp dirt. You cup your face as rocks and dirt flying all around you, much of it getting into your mouth.

Your heart and head are both pounding, and most of your body is stuck in the soil right now as you try to not have a panic attack about your current situation. After nearly a minute with the dust settling, you realize that you've sunk nearly forty feet down into something - a single beam of light coming down on you from above.. you break out into a coughing fit as more particles get into your mouth. You try getting one arm out - it takes you nearly five minutes of wiggling your arm in the loose dirt to pry it free.

Next, you scrape away the rocks and dirt against your chest, moving as much as you can away from you with a single arm. Once your other arm is pried free, you work at the rest of the landslide around you as you manage to control your breathing.

It takes you the better part of half an hour, but you're free. You look like a kid that decided to have too much fun at the park after you look down at yourself. You feel itchy and gross, but you're proud of yourself for mainly staying calm and not freaking yourself out into another worse situation.

Okay.

You look around you - you can't see much of anything, as it's very dark around you aside from the light-up above. You're underground, and you can really only see dirt. Are you in some sort of pocket?

You think you might be able to climb up from where you've slid all the way down. You lift one of your legs up to gain purchase on the dirt that looks most steady, but as you step into it your foot just sinks down. You try hoisting yourself up in several areas, but the dirt just crumbles or slips out from your grasp. You can't get a decent hold on anything, it seems.

There are some tree roots sticking out of the dirt above you in a couple of places. You think it seems decently manageable, trying for those. It takes you a couple of tries, reaching for the lowest one. You think it might be possible to use these like some kind of rockwall if you can get a grip on that first one, and use them to climb back up. You find that the only way for you to get up to the first one is to build a small pile of dirt up, but you do actually manage to grab it after a couple of enthusiastic jumps.

Once you have that root in hand, you pull on it hard twice to make sure it's stable enough, and sure enough it is. You pull yourself up tentatively, it's hard, but your time on this planet the last few weeks have toughened up your muscles. You're a little proud of yourself.

You manage to get yourself up a good six feet by the time you have to reach for another root, and you nearly slip. This wouldn't even be a problem if Spinel was with you. She could just.. stretch her arms and throw you up there. Fucking gems and their stupid weird abilities that you're definitely not jealous of.

You find yourself annoyed that this shit seriously has to happen at the worst times.

This would be even less of a problem if you had like.. not taken a shortcut. Because while you know where you are, Spinel does not. And you know you're far enough away from the regular path that she'd never hear, you even if you screamed. You feel so fucking stupid for getting cocky out here.

You sigh out loud through your teeth and resign to pretending things are okay and that you're not always 2 steps from complete disaster. You reach out for the other root, grasping it firmly and cementing your left foot a bit higher on the wall. So good so far. Maybe at this rate, you'll get out and can meet back up with Spinel and pretend this little incident never happened. She'll wonder why you're covered in dirt, again.. but you don't need to divulge in specifics. She'll just admonish you for going off path.. and basically every single other bad decision you've made.