House Fire (Sabine Please)

[Niv]

10th of Zi'da, Arc 716

As soon as Niv fell into slumber, the Tunawa found herself drifting through an azure nothingness. With only pin hole sized sparkles twinkling about to provide illumination. A slight smile formed on her face as she began to count the tiny lights.
"One twinkle, two twinkle, three twinkle, four-”

Her counting was interrupted by the odd sensation of a wriggling slug on her back. She tried to push away but seemed tied there by a strong magnetic pull. Niv glanced up to see a crack in the sky and desperately reached for it. She gripped onto the smooth rocks surrounding the crevice and pulled herself up with all her might.

Niv’s glassy eyes struggled to adjust to the light that greeted her outside. When her eyes adjusted, the Tunawa realized that she was pulling herself out of a humans gaping mouth. She tried to identify the rude human who dared to eat her but Niv was only able to make out details of individual features, the face as a whole was a blur.
“I’m ..Not… Food!” Niv shouted as she forcefully pried the rest of her body free. The force was enough to send her stumbling backwards bouncing off the chin and onto the humans chest. She got up and dusted herself of before looking around for an exit.

From what Niv could tell she was in the humans nesting quarters. Below her was a thick quilt that covered the humans sleeping body. While most of the patches that made up the quilt were the typical floral or stripe patterns one might expect, there were a few that held life like imagery. There was one patch to Niv’s left that depicted a ship in stormy waters. It was so vivid that Niv could feel the chill of the bitter wind and salty sea water splashing on her exposed bark.

[Sabine]

For a moment, there was peace.

As the waves rose above the ship like gods, they brought with them a silence that spanned the entire length of the sea. Sabine stared up at them with all the fear and awe that one found in the devout as the drumming of the rain and the shouts of the crew faded into nothingness.

And then they crashed down on her like thunder.

She squeezed her eyes shut and clutched desperately at the ropes to keep from being swept overboard. For a tick – just a tick – she could feel the presence of someone behind her, his breath on her neck and his arms wrapped tightly around her waist to keep her from falling.

A quiet word was murmured into her skin, and then he was gone.

Vincent.

Her eyes flew open and she spun around, feet sliding on the deck as rain pounded down around her.

He’d been right there, hadn’t he? It had to have been him. He’d whispered a promise in the rain, a promise to stay and keep her safe. But now, as she searched for him in the storm, it was like he’d never existed.

Sabine shouted his name, quickly followed by a curse as the bitter wind stole all language from her lips. The ropes slid through her fingers and she stepped towards the railing with panic twisting in her stomach and clawing at her chest.

Where are you!

But the gods had their own plans, and finding Vincent was not among them. A new wave crashed onto the deck and swept her off her feet before she could blink. She grabbed for the ropes, for the railing, for anything that could keep her on the ship, but soon found herself passing over its sides and into the black waters below.

A short struggle.

A stab of pain.

And then: darkness.

- - -

As Niv observed the patch depicting the lifelike sea, a lone wave would appear in its center. It would grow larger and larger until, finally, it passed through the quilt and rose high in the bedroom, towering above the tiny tunawa and casting shadows over the room’s human occupant.

But this time, the wave didn’t fall.

Instead, just as it seemed ready to crash down and drown the room in seawater, the wave would vanish without a trace – leaving behind only the faint smell of salt and a miniature half-biqaj woman passed out on the bed.

[Niv]

The more Niv looked at the image, the more alive it became until it erupted from the quilt's fibres. The Tunawa recoiled in alarm just in time to avoid the stream of water that shot to the sky. There was barely time to process what was happening before it disappeared and left what Niv could only assume was a shrunken human woman in it's wake. Niv cautiously approached the girl like she was a fragile explosive ready to go off at any second. A small wooden finger slowly moved towards the girl but retracted the second bark to flesh contact was made.

“Wait..what am I doing…” Niv muttered to herself, after realizing it was her duty as a healer to help those in need.
Niv put her hand in front of the women's mouth and felt faint breath. The Tunawa’s eyes narrowed in focus as she looked over the girls cranium for any trauma but saw none. Niv didn’t know what to do with a drowning human and was terrified of making things worse with her inexperience.
“Are…you okay…small human..” Niv whispered into the woman’s pointed ear. “Wake up, Wake up…wake up.” Niv began to chant with growing desperation.

Niv got up again and frantically looked around the room for something that would help or at least give her an idea. Other than the bed there was only one piece of furniture in the entire room and it was a strange dresser made of jagged slate rock. The solitary means of escape was the regrettably Ne’hearian style door, which was of course the bane of Niv’s existence. The doors back in Desnind were usually made of stringed beads, cloth or some other material Niv could pass through, Far more welcoming than the solid barriers other cities kept in place.

[Sabine]

Wake up, wake up, wake up…

Light broke through the darkness with the slow certainty of a rising sun. It grew brighter and brighter until, finally, it reached its peak and could no longer be ignored.

Wake up.

Sabine stirred.
 
“Mmfph.”

Her eyes fluttered, blinked, and flashed open in a panic. She spluttered and rolled heavily to her side as water forced itself from her lungs and sprayed across the patchwork quilt. Her muscles stiffened and seized as a series of coughs took control, desperate to erase all signs of the sea from her body.
 
“Ungh…” She lay prone for a time, struggling to gather the energy to move again after the coughing had ceased, before finally dragging herself to her knees and looking blearily around the room.

Where…?

Her vantage point shifted as the quilt rose up, taking her with it. She was on some sort of oversized bed, one that seemed built to hold an army - or perhaps a giant. Across the room sat a parody of a dresser - one hundred times the usual size - and, next to it, was the biggest door she had ever seen. A rush of hot air sent her hair whirling, and she found her view once again limited as the quilt lowered back down.

But rather than noticing the human beneath her, Sabine’s eyes fell on the oddest and most beautiful creature in Idalos. It was like a tree, if a tree had eyes, a nose, two arms, and two legs. Tan-coloured bark covered its limbs and teal vines rose from its head, twisting around violet flowers and fungi. She stared at it for a long moment, trying to understand exactly who or what it was.

And then she remembered: Vincent.
 
“Hello?” Her voice was hoarse as she attempted her first communication with the creature before her. “Please, you have to help me,” she begged. “I have to get out of here.”
 
I have to find him.
 
She scrambled to her feet and wavered unsteadily before rushing to the side of the bed. It was as though she were looking over the side of the world’s tallest tower. The ground seemed endlessly far, and there was very little to cling to should she attempt to scale her way down.

“Do you have a rope or… or a ladder?” she asked, barely listening to the logic of her own questions as she scanned the room for anything that could help.

[Niv]

An overwhelming sense of relief hit Niv as the mysterious woman awoke but there was little time for relief. The women seemed desperate to leave for an urgent reason she didn’t feel the need to share. Niv didn’t exactly want to stay here ether but was more confused then distressed. It was probably best not to know what frightened the woman and just focus on the task at hand.

“Hello.” Niv returned the greeting in a calm voice ”My Name is Niv and I will help you but you have to stay calm.” Part of medical care was to keep the patient from panicking since it only made the situation worse.

The women asked for a ladder and Niv scanned the horizon again for one. There was no sign of any rope or anything practical they could use but there was however a ladder like design on one of the quilted patches. Without a second thought, Niv grabbed hold of the ends of the pattern and lifted. A ladder pulled from the fabric like it had been laying there the entire time in hiding.
“Will this do?”

The ladder didn’t seem very long at all, not even making it up to Niv’s neck. As Niv held it over the bed however, it became just the right length to climb down onto the wood floor boards below. Niv made her way down first, going past the covers and seeing the darkness under the bed for the first time.

As Niv gazed into the pitch back abyss under the bed, two glowing orbs appeared and stared directly at her. She blinked and the apparition disappeared as quickly as it had arrived.
“Did you…” Niv mumbled. “Never mind.” She was just seeing things, no need to scare the already upset stranger.

Niv reached the bottom of what felt like the longest descent she had ever taken and made her way to the door. It was a massive barrier that stretched into the sky and sadly had little space at the bottom to crawl under.

“How do you open these things.” Niv grumbled with a steady frown of frustration. “I always have to wait until someone opens it for me.”

As the two talked a spark ignited under the bed which grew into an orb of fire that continued to swell and absorb the darkness around it.

[Sabine]

Sabine’s eyes widened.

The creature spoke.

And not only did it speak, but it also had a name – one which it introduced to her with more politeness than Sabine had in her entire body. Had she not been concerned about escaping the mountain on which they stood, Sabine might have considered how mortals had names and pets had names and horses had names, so perhaps it wasn’t so strange that a courteous talking tree might also have a name.

But she was concerned, and so the thought only drifted through her mind for a moment before being stuffed down and overwhelmed by her intense desire to find a goddamn ladder.

“Calm?! I am calm!” The shouted words came out as a croak. She began to pace in a frenzied pattern along the top of the quilt, alternating her glares between Niv and the fabric. Except the glares at Niv soon faded as the humanoid tree pulled a tiny ladder from the quilt and flung it down along the side of the bed.

She scrambled to the edge just in time to see it grow in length until it reached just above the wooden floorboards.

Perfect.

It took all her self-discipline not to rush the Tree Named Niv down the ladder. Instead, to keep herself from losing control, she focused on taking it one step at a time. Her feet were bare and her toes curled around each wooden rung to confirm it was there before she moved on to the next.

Arcs could have passed by the time Sabine reached the darkness beneath the bed. She found herself staring into the empty space, searching for the very same face that she’d lost on the ship. For a moment, she thought she saw movement and her fingers released from the ladder to reach into the shadows. But there was nothing there – most especially not Vincent. She bit her lip and grimly continued her descent until her feet touched the ground. The ladder pulled up as soon as she released it and faded back into the side of the quilt until it was, once again, nothing more than a picture.

Niv was already making its way to the next obstacle and Sabine followed behind as quickly as she could. An endless wooden wall rose from the floorboards, blocking their passage to the world beyond – a world which, she could only presume, held the answers she sought.

She stared up, frustrated, until Niv said the magic words – “Open” – and she finally realized what she was looking at. “Of course,” she said. She stepped forward and began to knock on the wall, to feel around it for secret cracks and edges. “I know what this is.” Her voice, though still hoarse, had become more authoritative as she began to feel more confident. “There’s got to be some sort of secret doorway – a passage, of sorts – hidden in this wall.”

It was so obvious.

A light breeze flowed beneath the wall and blew softly over her toes, while her back began to warm as the fire lit up behind her.

As the fire lit up behind her.

As the fire…

She spun around to face the flames – flames which were crackling in the darkness beneath the bed, though the bed itself was not catching fire.

Yet.

Eyes flashed from deep within the flames and Sabine stumbled backwards. “Uh, Niv…?”