Bed of Flowers - Unedited Thread Replies
I'm a narrative-based roleplayer and, more often than not, I've realized my reply length sometimes pressures folks into replying to the same length as my posts and it leads to too much happening in one reply for me to react to. I'm used to editing down my posts at this point, but I've always wanted to share them somewhere as is, so this is one of those places now. This is for that very thing, just for one of the threads I'm in as my lad, Breaker. I'll elaborate on it more another time.
Author's Notes
Needed context:
After Breaker and his new friend, Cassius, had gone grocery shopping for a lunch they would prepare together, Cassius realized he had forgotten something terribly important for said meal and he had to rush out again to go grab them, leaving Breaker to his devices in Cassius' humble abode.
Breaker had no issues with this, doing what he knew how to do as to market he cooking process easier once he came back, but what Cassius failed to tell him was that their guest was a literal giant -- a giant who had never seen him before and, without Cassius in the home, assumed Breaker was an intruder.
This piece of the thread starts just after Breaker had bolted out of the giant's sight, into a different room, and slammed the door behind him. During the thread, the giant had pried open the window with a fingernail and tried reaching for Breaker, which is what the "noise" mentioned is.
Reply #37
Behind that closed door, Breaker sank to the floor, back firmly against the wooden surface as though it could keep the giant at bay. Keep him from finding the stranger somehow. There was nothing, absolutely nothing in this world, his years, nothing, that could have prepared him for this very moment. Nothing was ever bigger than he, save for his long-passed brothers. Not until this month, where trees loomed over him like obelisks and buildings, once simple boxes, outstretched and engulfed like cavernous catacombs. Machines churned and boasted might and heights varied and unmatched and the clouds he once admired how hung above all like mute watchers. Intangible, unknown, and now so, so far away.
But those were inanimate, and if not, soulless. Thoughtless. They either were a part of nature and little more or nothing without a puppeteer. This was alive. He breathed and spoke with a voice that shook the very foundation of this humble container.
Never before did the mortal-bound think he'd envy the solitude of the clouds, nor wish for it back.
Breaker's face found itself buried in his hands. Blacking out the world around him, fighting to ignore the rumbling sound that surrounded and filled the walls and focusing on his breath. Cass called this feeling something the night prior. He couldn't remember what, but that mattered little. He needed to breathe. Just breathe.
A sound broke his fragile concentration like metal to glass. So slight, so simple, he might have missed it if not for his fright.
Breaker's face snapped out from behind stiff hands to look toward the noise. To the opened window. To the reaching hand.
He didn't remember getting up. He didn't remember whipping around, spinning in place on the floor to face the door and get away from what could crush him into a bent mess of bone and blood, be it on purpose or accidental, and, most certainly, he didn't remember the doorknob.
One second the man was a ball on the floor. The next, he had thrown open a hole in the door, its wood soundlessly warping and bending like fabric, like curtains, to reveal an inky nothing before leaping inside, the hole closing seamlessly as soon as he was out of sight.
Almost instantly Breaker shot out from another opening, reality itself being pushed outward and to the sides like cloth in the wind, and he rolled to a stop on the floor. Immediately he bolted upright to reorient himself. A new room. By the looks of it through the window, one on the complete opposite side of the house, albeit on the same floor.
This only bought time. Barely a minute's worth. He needed to hide.
In or under the largest furniture in here would do. It would have to. There was no time to debate.