The full version of the narration @daboyau wrote for the TMNT Au Comp ask.
The cloaked figure approaches, dark water dripping from sodden folds of time-worn fabric. It may have been orange once, but silt and sun have warped the color to a shifting expanse of patterns and colors that make your head ache a little to look at.
The water pools beneath your feet, warm and rippling like something living, and from beneath the shadows of the cloak a fist extends. The sight of it makes the breath catch in your throat and brings with it the unnerving sensation of the ground dropping away beneath your feet.
You look down, just to be sure, and your reflection in the water is smiling back at you, only there are too many eyes and teeth and that smile stretches until the edges of that too-wide mouth split open, wounded, hungry—
You turn your attention back to the offered hand.
There are too many joints, but you still recognize the callouses that come from hours spent perfecting a craft, the grooves of art supplies and cooking utensils worn into each deft finger. Gold ripples across the appendage with every slight movement, though, chipping away at healthy green scales like pieces of broken pottery.
Your eyes follow the cracks as they wind their way up his hand and wrist, delicate spiderwebs of softly glowing light disappearing beneath heavy almost-orange fabric. It seems to pulse in beat with your own heart, and at first glance it is like sunlight reflecting off of moving water. When you look closer, though, you can’t help but think of infection and rot, boils filled with pestilence, just waiting to burst.
Your stomach churns at the sight, something itching at the back of your mind, a wrongness that feels like teeth poised at your throat and an endless abyss beneath your feet.
You resist the urge to look back down towards the water beneath you, the knowledge that something Other would be staring back settling like hands around your neck.
(The desire to look still itches behind your eyes and beneath your nails, a siren’s call to sink beneath waves and give yourself up to the endless deep. It’s unsettling, how much you want to give in to it.)
You shudder, and the fisted hand waves a little bit, trying to get your attention. You blink, swallow down the discomfort and uncertainty, and hold your own hand out, palm up, to accept whatever it is that’s being offered.
There’s a happy little hum from within the folds of the cloak, a flash of a smile with sharpened teeth. There’s a glow to that shadowed face, gold caught behind teeth and rippling in the depths of his eyes.
Something is dropped into your hand.
It prickles against your palm, and when you drag your eyes away from (…Mikey..?) you find a bracelet resting there.
You squint, lift it closer to your face to inspect it, doing your best to ignore the fact that there are whispers echoing in your ears, wordless voices all clamoring to fill the space between your skull and brain. You focus only on the piece of handmade jewelry, noting the intricate way its needle-like components are woven together to create a ouroboros out of delicate fish bones and polished sea glass and rough-hewn twine. You trace the continuous pattern of it until the world around you spins.
“Good luck,” the aberration of Mikey says.
His words are layered and unsettling, a dozen voices echoing across open water just to reach your ears. But it is still familiar; you can hear the smile in it, know what expression he wears without having to peer beneath the shadows of his hood.
Something about that fact makes the hazy edges of fear begin to recede. You’re pretty sure you manage a smile as he turns on his heel and flounces away, leaving a trail of dark water in his wake. The bracelet sits heavy in your hand, and even though your mind feels clearer the more distance put between you and him, you can’t help but think that you can still feel those whispers tickling at the back of your mind.
