Night 66: West Wing, South Hall 1-B

[faeth]

[ from here. ]

There were footsteps now.

Soft ones, loud ones, some that creaked and others that seemed to slide on smooth like the sound of shadows spilling along the walls. If anything, she could tell by the attempts at quiet that there was nothing of immediate concern in the area, or else there would be more alarm, more panicked voices rising to the occasion. No danger yet, but there were likely people, and Orihime wondered how everyone was coping with the fact that some of their friends held monsters beneath their skin. Wondering if they were flooded with the same fearsome doubt that she once had when she first saw--

Inside of her sneakers, her toes wiggled. The hallway seemed clear enough, and so there was nothing to fear, but every time her shoes hit the floor, she worried over her clumsy steps, her shoelaces – perhaps they’d reach up around her ankles and yank when she was least expecting it.

The hallway was exceptionally wider, perhaps colder, but she tried not to think about how small her light seemed as she scanned it across the floor in front of her, focusing instead on her instructions, on the little pieces of information she had gathered during the day. The door over there possibly led to there, the hallway on this end led over there…

Maybe she should have drawn herself a map before she left the room, but memory and necessity served well enough for her purposes. Paranoia, too. Battery life, her mind reminded her, and she shut off her flashlight as she neared the opposite wall, pressing a hand against it as she blindly groped around in the darkness.

You’re a cat. An owl! Kangaroo, Bat M-

Regardless of how much she attempted to imagine herself as a creature of the night (vampire? No, no, best not to cause any unnecessary panic in the off-chance her acting skills were too much for anyone else to handle), adjusting was much more difficult than she’d initially thought. Even as she heard others passing on by, she stubbornly persisted, biting the inside of her cheek as she avoided looking at the occasional beam of light coming from a stranger. Her eyes needed to get accustomed to the night anyway.

Anything else would’ve been cheating.

[ to here. ]

Comments

[madeinthehrl]

[from here]

She thought back to their breakfast conversation with Lingormr as they progressed further down the hall. The Once-ler had mentioned he was a businessman, hadn't he? Was it some kind of gardening service? An endangered plant--all right, she could see why that would be valuable. But it seemed an odd thing to receive in a place like this.

"What kind of seed is it?" she asked. Not that she was likely to recognize the answer, considering she was hard-pressed to name ten plants from her own world. But it had to special somehow, didn't it?

[fallenbeanpole]

"A Truffula tree seed," the Once-ler answered. "They don't look like the typical tree. Long, thin trunk with black and white stripes, and instead of leaves it grows tufts." His voice took on a slightly distant cast as he recalled the qualities that first drew him to the tufts.

"They come in many colors, reds, pinks, oranges, even some purples and yellows. There's nothing softer, not even silk. And they smell of butterfly milk." For a moment the man was lost in his memories. He missed those times.

The Once-ler shook his head to recall himself to the present. "Well, they used to. There aren't any left now."

[madeinthehrl]

They certainly didn't sound like any trees Soma had seen before. And even unfamiliar as she was with the trees of her own world, she was willing to bet the Earth she came from didn't have them.

The Once-ler's voice softened a little as he answered, and the sudden change only increased Soma's curiosity. Something had happened to the trees, then, if the Once-ler was clearly old enough to remember when so many of them existed.

But that wasn't the most important question.

"What does butterfly milk smell like?" she asked hesitantly. "Butterflies...don't produce milk in my world."

[fallenbeanpole]

"Actually, I really don't know that much about butterflies," the Once-ler admitted, somewhat sheepishly. "But the smell... it's pretty much the sweetest scent you can imagine."

He knew his description wasn't the greatest, but there really was no way to explain something like that. It was something that had to be experienced.

[to here]