The something creature is making wind in its chest. Arth holds onto the bits of soft that cover it as much as his stubby fingers will allow. He buries his face into its warm body to try and make things less. There is no fluffy cloud beneath him now, instead something hard and bumpy in its place, even more solid than that thread he once felt beneath his little feet.  

It is too much of everything all at once; the ground beneath him, the screaming sounds in his ears, the sensations he does not know how to process or understand. It scares Arth and he so he clings to the comfort of the something creature, feeling its chest move in and out as it makes wind and storms.  

They sit there for a long time, the soft warm creature and the otherling that fell from the sky. Slowly Arth begins to loosen his grip on the creature's soft and it says /caw/ quietly in encouragement.  

And so Arth raises up his half-formed misshapen head and opens his pale concaved eyes to see the world of the undersky.  

It is overwhelming and makes his head ache with so many different everythings all at once. The sky above him is so broad and bright and stretches out in colours as far as he can see, and all around him there are the great towering constructs of the underlings that reach up from beneath him like square concrete fingers.  

Arth swings himself up onto his squat legs, bones clicking as he walks in this new maze. The creature hops along with him. He recognises little bits that are not so new, things that he saw as treasure beyond the tear. He points to one and calls it a bus-stop and the creature says squawk squawk in agreement.  

They continue, Arth both enticed and terrified of every new thing he comes across. Another creature that looks like it is made of bits of soft but is not as large as one that makes wind and rain comes over to them and says coo, but is scared away when Arth reaches out to touch it.  

The sky changes colour here. There is a heaviness in Arth's joints, they hurt and ache and so he sits down to give them a little rest while he watches. It goes deeper and darker until in the end there seems to be no colour at all and Arth thinks that it is the same colour as his skin. But there are bright little pin-pricks above him and he sky has a smile, bright and clean and curved and Arth tilts his head to one side to match the grin and waves.  

"What the hell?"  

He is on his feet in an instant his curiously easily overwhelmed by fear. Arth runs and runs and his clicking bones hurt and hurt until they give way and he tumbles over. The creature hops over, he can hear the scritch scritch of its feet on the ground and feel the warmth of its chest as it sits next to him.  

"I'm sorry, are you okay?"  

The creature is not afraid and Arth decides that he should not be either. He sits up and rubs the bits of ground off his face and looks up.  

The underling is so vastly different to his half-formed self. Tall with long slim limbs and fingers that seem proper, not stubby and stunted like his own. Arth nods.  

"Where did you come from?"  

He lifts an arm and points towards the tear. He cam see the tiny shapes of his fellow otherlings climbing over each other. Perhaps they just returned some treasure.  

"Really? You're one of them?"  

At first Arth thinks he should say yes but realises that he is not so sure any more. The otherlings did not like to ask question like he did, they did not like the rain or the wind or the creature that made them. They did not like him.  

The underling crouches down and hold out a hand.  

"I'm Rhys, do you have a name?"  

Arth tells him that he is Arth, and holds his arm out too. The underling laughs a little and shakes it.  

"Is this seagull a friend of yours?"  

At first Arth does not understand until he realises that Rhys means the creature. He tells him that the seagull is his friend and that it makes wind and storms.  

"Does it now? Well I never knew that. So what are you doing down here, do you have anywhere to go?"  

Arth says no, that he was thrown and that he fell and that he bounced. Rhys has a curious expression on his face that Arth does not recognise, but does not want to ask what it means.  

"Well, would you like to come with me?"  

He stands up and offers his hand again and so Arth shakes it. Rhys laughs more and takes hold of Arth's little twisted hand, leaning over so that he does not have to reach up too much. They walk under the dark blanket of the sky and with a scritch scritch of its feet on the ground the storm making seagull follows them.