starter for @hallowknighted!
Whatever this new place was, it was far too crowded. Red immediately sought another path to quieter places rather than towards the bustling heart of Spirale. Instead, she went to Yesteryear.
Though Red couldn’t see particularly well in the dark, they could tell it recently rained. The humidity, the wetness beneath their feet ... with each step, they felt droplets slipping off their claws behind them. No sounds, no voices to scramble her thoughts, so many voices and noises and mechanical shrieks, not like the low humming and strumming of Home, of the Leg and the Underhang, a thousand languages decoded at once and fed back to them-
Red closed her eyes and clutched the piece of rebar - something they found lying about, far better than that wooden pole they’d discarded - tighter, stopping in her tracks in the middle of the desolate road. She visualised her path so far, though she couldn’t tell how much time was left until she’d need to find another shelter.
It worried her.
But then came noises from a nearby entrance - a long-abandoned shop, windows dulled by time if not broken, overgrown with hanging moss. Red stalked forward, slipping between the shards of glass on all fours with one hand holding her makeshift spear up.
Who knows how electricity was still running through here, but there was a light in the middle of the shop, flickering on and off, on and off. Red stopped, ears pointed forward and eyes wide, staring back at the small figure at the other end, just barely visible in the shadows.