[Gleaming, bright-spun threads of purple spiderweb across the empty air in a steady inflorescence. The pressure in the Drifter's chest is unrelenting, one hand fisted across the fabric of their front, their heart burning as it thrashes violently in their chest. The words carry from atop the cliff -
If you let go, I can catch you and set you down here.
The question then boils down to one of trust. There is only one person in their life who can claim to have carried that mantle, to have borne their trust, tacitly given without regret. They clutch at the threads of their cloak, wishing the furred collar of the other's pale pink were draped around them instead, as though the shreds of their friend could have offered counsel.
The pitted, foam-capped sea splashes beneath them, and their grip begins to tremble the longer they spasm with each wracking, wordless cough. For a fraction of a second, the water looks an inky black, a pink rhombus glowering at them with its sickly, taunting light.
And they blink, and the apparition is gone.
The Drifter closes their eyes. They are faced with a choice, when their life has seldom offered anything of the sort. They chose not whether they would trust the fellow drifter who saved their life, nor what would come of the illness eating them from the inside out. They chose only to do something about it before they succumbed; if there was even the slightest, faintest chance of survival, they would endure because they had to.
Like many of the other options exposed to them, the choice is not really one at all. The manner in which they die seldom is.
The Drifer's eyes open, pitch-black and flinted with resolve.
no subject
If you let go, I can catch you and set you down here.
The question then boils down to one of trust. There is only one person in their life who can claim to have carried that mantle, to have borne their trust, tacitly given without regret. They clutch at the threads of their cloak, wishing the furred collar of the other's pale pink were draped around them instead, as though the shreds of their friend could have offered counsel.
The pitted, foam-capped sea splashes beneath them, and their grip begins to tremble the longer they spasm with each wracking, wordless cough. For a fraction of a second, the water looks an inky black, a pink rhombus glowering at them with its sickly, taunting light.
And they blink, and the apparition is gone.
The Drifter closes their eyes. They are faced with a choice, when their life has seldom offered anything of the sort. They chose not whether they would trust the fellow drifter who saved their life, nor what would come of the illness eating them from the inside out. They chose only to do something about it before they succumbed; if there was even the slightest, faintest chance of survival, they would endure because they had to.
Like many of the other options exposed to them, the choice is not really one at all. The manner in which they die seldom is.
The Drifer's eyes open, pitch-black and flinted with resolve.
And they drop into the web below.]