// @beavthemerlin continuing from here //
Transcription:
she did██ mean it that way
I'm hurting ███
she does██ bring fire
fire fire fire Shh!
The dark seems as deep as it is wide.
The light does not belong here.
It cuts through the dark in a thin, wavering line — too sharp, too Bea. The small blue sprite flutters ahead of her, its glow scattering across twisted roots and petrified veins of heartwood, painting them in that same sharp relief.
The place where Bea stands is…wrong. Too close. Too deep—in a flare they had imagined smothering the flame, deadening her barbs before they could hook into anything still soft. Seized, dragged, buried, silent—
Verdant’s head turns, still bent forward, just slightly. Their focus drags, stutters, catches on the sprite as it flutters in their narrowed view. It slips in and out of near clarity, settling almost out of reach.
“You’re…bright. But cold.” The words catch—brittle, crackling as something dragged through smoke.
They twist their head a bit more. Squint.
Their hand twitches. Fingers splaying in the roots woven through the dirt below them, then closing tight.
The chill fairy light pricks against the fermenting heat. A fluttering balm that isn’t close enough to quite settle, or soothe.
A faint motion of their hand through the heavy dark—hesitant, incomplete—brushing near the thin light without ever quite touching.
“Here I am…” It’s thin. Rasping, pulled over something sore.
Verdant recoils. A sharp, involuntary jerk against the inky dark—
and it answers.
It presses in around them both, close and immediate. Roots wind through and around, threading the space between them, knitting the gloam tight.
The sprite flinches and moves out of their reach. For a heartbeat, it looks like it might spread.
“Don’t—”
Like it might catch.
The word breaks out of them, splintered. Verdant’s shoulders hitch, and then they cough. A rough, tearing sound, dragged up from too deep. It catches halfway, scrapes, leaves them folded in on themselves for a moment before it passes.
Slowly—carefully—they twist, the motion uneven, dragging through root and dark as they turn just enough to look back over their shoulder at Bea.
She carries that same light—kin to the sprite’s glow, but dimmer. Softer. It limns her in the dark, thin and wavering.
Verdant blinks.
And it dips—further, fainter—like their vision can’t hold it steady, like something in them keeps trying to snuff it out.
Fear hooks its claw—
too far I pulled you too far this isn’t for you you don’t understand you never—why would you come down here why would you—there’s nowhere else for me to go I don’t fit up there anymore it won’t hold me it won’t take me back I don’t fit—you shouldn’t be here you shouldn’t see this you shouldn’t be this close to it—
“…you shouldn’t have come here.”
