The First Delve Pt. 3

The moisture on the cave walls has gathered in the center of this chamber, forming a pool. Harmless, colorful invertebrates wave at you from the bottom. Ah… A peaceful respite. You can check your equipment and gather your thoughts here.

The flower comes away, easily, between his teeth.

Neméos’s legs are shaking; he stumbles, once or twice, on the small crossing of the cave. The petals bleed, crushed between his teeth; a sweet kind of syrup, which runs over his tongue, drips in spit-wet gobs onto the rocky ground.

He snorts.

The clear, still pond at the cave’s heart ripples, delicately, as Neméos drops the flower into it.

Dusty pink and orange, it drifts out across the water. Darting, whitish fish flit out from their small hollows, and knock their blunt, blind noses against it. 

The flower does not blacken. The little fish do not grow sudden rows of razor teeth and shred it into ribbons.

In the dim, still cave, water plinks from the stalactites, and makes musical noises on the surface of the pond. Secretive blue flowers peek out, shyly, from cracks in the walls. Glow just enough to see by, the light a soft and halfway-thing, dreamlike.

This beauty does not fool Neméos- not a second time.

He watches his flower for a long moment, suspicious. Bends down, at last, haltingly, to sniff at the water– all four legs braced, even trembling as they are, to bolt.

It smells only like cool, clear water; a little silty, maybe. 

Reflected in its surface, up-close, distorted, Neméos’s face is patched with raw, red marks, his golden hide all burned away to skin. Pussy, pinkish fluid weeps from the corner of his eye; beads up, sticky, from his skin.

The acid-wounds still hurt, terribly, throbbing, like the worst sunburn he’s ever known. Neméos steadies himself. Gently, hesitatingly, touches his nose to the water.

He jerks back, as soon as he’s done it, snorting. His hooves make a tap-dancing sound on the stone floor, ready to be away.

But it’s only water; blessedly cool, in the humid cave.

Neméos lowers his head, again, after a cautious pause, and drinks. Soothing, on his burning throat. It had been inside his mouth, the awful thing, Maybe would have eaten him all up from the inside, or would have drowned him, would have burned him down to bones, alone in the dark, and nobody would even have known.

Only, it would have been no more Neméos, one day. 

Who would notice, even, if he didn't return?

He shakes his head. After a moment, dips his burning nose into the pond, the whiskers singed away. The water is such a relief, against his skin, that he does this next part without thinking.

Hooves braced against the slope, skidding on the silty ground, he plunges into the pool entirely. Water sloshes up around him, overflowing. Panicked, brightly-coloured creatures burst out in a cloud from the sand, and dart away.

Afraid of him– maybe the only thing in the world that is. Neméos ducks his head back underwater, to look at them.

A vibrantly blue shrimp waves its pinchers at him, smaller head-to-tail than a horse’s ear; a tiny boxer’s stance, scuttling back and forth.

Cute, almost. Neméos lifts his head back before he can get pinched, snorting water from his nose.

Submerged to his shoulders, now, his hide doesn’t sting so terribly. He chances a glance back at himself. And it looks as bad as it had felt– massive raw patches, hair falling away in clumps. Spatter-marks, sprayed back unevenly, pink and red across his back and flanks.

Maybe they would scar– they would make cool-looking scars. Nobody had to know where he had gotten them from.

This thought cheers him up enough to drag himself back out of the pond, shaking like a dog. His forelock, flopping soaked over his eye, has a tiny, miserable shrimp, clinging to it for dear life.

Neméos looks at it, inches from his eye– a small, bright, spark of life here in the ancient depths. Hanging on to the only warm thing it can find, blind and grasping. His chest hurts, for a reason that he cannot place. 

Gently- more gently than he needs to- Neméos folds himself down to kneel by the water, and lowers his head, submerging it again.

Sound muffles– bubbles rush up past his eyes.

The shrimp hesitates– crawling, at first, further up Neméos’s neck. Then, in a sudden rush, it’s off, blowing past his face. Suddenly graceful in the water. A flash of colour; then it’s gone.

Neméos lifts his head, again, with a strange pang. 

He doesn’t stand up, right away.

It’s growing cold, now that he’s all wet. Clammy; like he might catch a chill. His skin still smarts. His legs are tired– hooves, too, the ground harder than he’s used to. And his chest aches. Aches, like some of that burning slime had made its way into his lungs, his heart. The dim light is a constant strain, on his surfacer’s eyes.

It’s just–

It just isn’t what it was supposed to be, at all. He must be missing something.

On the wide, warm plains of his colthood, he had stumbled after other foals, playing at this life– adventuring. What courser didn’t? 

The smell the storms made, breaking in the summer time. Green and wild, a feeling in the air to raise the hair up from your spine. Pretending the thunder was the noise of far-off dragons– chasing storms, as a herd of stupid younglings, calling out to one another. 

“It’s running away! It’s scared of us!” 

“After it! Ready your swords!”

“Keep up, Neméos!”

Slipping on wet grass; the ground soft, forgiving of a fall. Wild flash of lightning over the hill– dragon breath, to them, as thrilling as the real thing.

His aunt, ready to receive him home again. Soft words of his family, as she tended to his bumps and bruises. 

“Don’t mind the other foals, Némo.” The hearthfire she kept, even in the summertime. The warm, grassy sweetness of her breath. “Your parents could tell them all a thing or two about fighting dragons. Real ones.”

“Tell me?” His foreleg sprained, that year, when they had dared him to jump the river. Confined to his home, for weeks, as it had healed.

“Again, little lion?” Rain sheeting down outside; an overhang of cliff, flowering curtain of vines. “Well– you look just like your father. Too little for his legs, at your age, too.”

Puffing out his chest. Her whiskery nose, tickling his flank until he let go his stoicism, in a rush, and had to roll away, gasping with laughter. “Tell me, tell me!”

Neméos takes a breath. A smell of ozone. Woodsmoke, and warm rain– a benevolent ghost, here in the gloomy caves. 

Too little for his legs. He stretches his hooves out, now, looking at them; a pink mark, where acid had burned the stripes away above his knee. The warmth of a hearthfire, kindling in his chest even now.

With an ungainly lurch, he rises back up to his hooves.

She had been so sad, when he had left to go adventuring, for real. So unaccountably sad; a fading shape, watching him disappear over the hills. She had said, "Neméos, wait! Wait, I should tell you-"

But he was meant for this. Like his father. Like his father’s father.

The slime– its acid, again, eating through his flesh. Pain like nothing; a thousand sprained forelegs, a thousand bumps and bruises, something eating him, eating him alive, mindless hungry force– 

But surely…

A fluke. An accident, bad luck. It would be different, next time.

Neméos shakes himself, all over, as if trying to dry off. Before and behind him, dark tunnels yawn; hungry things, themselves.

He hesitates, a moment, staring on into the black. And then– with a sour, squeamish twinge, turns back.

Next time, he thinks.

Next time.