The Cave

"I see.." she blinked and then saluted awkwardly, "thanks for the shoes. I'll return them sometime."

Adeline made her way back toward the cave. She slid a bit in the shoes after her first step, but was able to find some sort of balance.

"Damned glass feet.." she muttered.

Reyes was ready to reply that no, in fact, he was not okay because who would ever be alright with all of this crazy stuff - too crazy, even by his standards - going on, but he wisely gave a slow nod of the head instead. Getting into a heated conversation with Kendrik wasn't going to get him anywhere. The only way he was going to get a grasp on the situation was by observing the others around him. It wasn't going to be a fast thing, but it was the best he could come up with at the moment and had been proven to work in previous situations.

Although those situations had involved ghosts, and not living people.


Now that the strange glass woman - which Maahes was in desperate need of an explanation for - had joined the others inside the cave, he could return to his conversation with James. He awkwardly cleared his throat. His voice quiet, he tried his best to say what he had meant to explain earlier. "I was different back when you last met me James," he said. "I'm not sure if you've realized it, but I think the past me and current you are really similar. I don't know what you're going through, and I don't know how you can handle it. I don't even know how long it's going to take. But things will get better. I promise. I've been through hell and I've come back out triumphant. Uh, metaphorically, of course. I haven't ever actually been to that place Sokar's running..."


Kartiel had been debating returning to the group at the beach or staying in the cave in case the man decided he wanted to return to the others - with his luck, that would be exactly what would happen if he left - but suddenly found the first idea all the more alluring when the glass woman stepped inside the cave.

"You're back," he said. He wanted to ask her a lot of different questions, but he couldn't figure out where to begin - especially when it seemed like she didn't like him all that much.

"That's what I try to tell myself. But even if I'm fighting for myself 'til the end of time, as long as I'm-" James stopped abruptly, intentionally cutting himself off. Part of it was habitual censoring, but there was a part of him that even so, wasn't sure if he could be completely honest without unnecessary risk. So he stopped and started again, as if continuing the thought a few sentences later.

"Even if I hope that things are going to get better, I might not even make to that better future because of outside forces working against me. And if I do survive that long - keyword if - I have absolutely no idea what life would look like not for lack of imagination, but because I just can't be goddamned bothered to consider a happy future where everything works out, because in order to even come out of this I'm going to need more people than myself. And currently I have no one. No one I can trust, and no one I would want to drag in with me with the stakes as high as they are and the details so lacking. The unknowns are stacked against me beyond that of a normal life and I mean that in the least condescending way possible tho people who live average lives. But it's just not the same for me. Which is my fault. And- I..." he stopped again, letting out a frustrated sigh.

"I realize... I'm being very vague. Possibly to the point where I'm not making much sense out of context. But what I mean is that - regardless of my personal issues, the larger issues at hand in my world - they demand my continued existence as long as there is no resolution to them. That much I have come to terms with. But what I'm really trying to say is... that I don't think there is a good end for me, because even if there was, I tend to self-sabotage anything good and worth preserving in my life before it has a chance to blossom. And while I know my character is not incapable of change, I find that despite my conscious efforts, I remain the same in that respect. And... well..." he paused, resting his chin in his hands.

"At this point my words have run away with me, and I have a feeling my ramblings have unraveled any strand of productive conversation. And the only reason I have language to describe these few things is because I've thoroughly processed them beforehand. So I'm afraid of the moment you ask me a question I don't have an answer to." Or really, just an answer that Maahes would like to hear, instead of the rest of the self-hating cow dung he was spouting.

Adeline stopped when she stepped into the cave. It was the stranger who had been staring at her like she was a circus act. She opened her mouth, but then thought better of the snarky comment resting on her tongue. Maybe it was better to not make enemies here. After all, she was reliant on these strangers' help if she wanted to get back home.

"Yeah, I'm baaack." She forced a fake grin onto her face.

Oh gosh, now I'm being creepy. Friendly, Adeline, friendly.

"U- uhm, what's your name?"

....close enough.

He listened to everything that James said with what he hoped was a comforting expression on his face, nodding in the right parts to show that he was paying attention. James was right; he was sounding vague, and that made it hard to understand what exactly he had been going through. But Maahes had been vague many times before, and this one was no exception. He hadn't told James the truth about him yet. Not the truth about what he had done, or even the truth about what he really was.

He didn't like telling people. It would - well, it would result in a conversation like this one, where they tried to pretend that they could comprehend something that they couldn't. And he would act like their conversation suddenly made everything alright, even though it never did.

"I can't completely understand what you're talking about," he said. "I think that even if you did explain everything about your life, I still wouldn't be able to fully put myself in your shoes. But I do understand what it's like to feel hopeless. Hearing my optimism probably doesn't help that much..."

He paused, thought to himself, then added, "So maybe it's better to not focus on the future, and focus on the present instead. You might feel alone, but you're not. I promise. The world has a weird way of working sometimes. There's a lot of people who feel as hopeless and alone as you do. They could-they could even be sitting right next to you, or be only a few feet away in that cave. They just might be hard to find when you look the first time."


He perked up when he realized she was talking to him. "I'm King Kartiel of the End, but you can call me Kartiel. What's your name?"

She raised her fiberglass eyebrows at his title. "I'm Adeline. Just Adeline."

She sank down to sit on a rock and used her tunic to dry slick spots on her skin, creating a squeaky noise.

Kendrik jumped off the canoe before it even reached the shore. Water only up to his knees, it was almost tolerable. It didn't stop goosebumps from forming on his skin, which drove him onto the shore. He looked around, sniffing. Jaron was here, if the smells of machine grease and wet fur were anything to go by, but the scents of the water and the sand masked his presence. Even his tracks had been wiped away by the lake or had blended into the rise and fall of the sand.

"See him anywhere?" Kendrik called to Reyes. He sounded slightly desperate.

James stared blankly out into the storm, down at the forest below. His tears had finally been washed off by the rain, and he could feel his soul quickly retreating into the safety of himself from what little he'd shown to Maahes.

The trouble was, that he knew all of these things. He knew it in his head. These were the things he would tell himself over and over again in his sleepless nights, when hopelessness held onto his heart with a vice-like grip. But the problem was that every positive thought became weaponized. "Focus on the present," became an accusation piling atop every other hateful thought he felt towards himself. All that ever ended up happening was he would just feel worse about himself for not doing those things and it was a cycle he didn't know how to break. He knew isolating himself didn't help, but any time he tried to be truly open, with everything laid bare, it was as if a muzzle was put on his mouth. He just... couldn't.

And it wasn't as if he couldn't imagine a hopeful future at all. He could see the path to 'better things' open up before everyone else but himself.

His eyes flickered over to Maahes.

"...Misery loves company," he said, gaze falling back on Maahes and lingering. "I'm sure you know your share as well."

A surprisingly Earth-like name for someone who couldn't possibly be from Earth. But who was he to judge? His life was likely just as peculiar as Adeline's was, and pretending that he had a normal childhood prior to this moment would only make him seem like someone he wasn't.

"I should have realized you weren't magical," he said. "You don't smell."


Reyes did, in fact, see him somewhere - but only after he had joined Kendrik on the shore. Rocks were jutting out from the sand down the length of the beach. It was behind one of them that he accidentally discovered Jaron, almost tripping over him as he scanned the horizon for Kendrik's friend (?).

"He's right here," Reyes called out.

Then he crouched down, because Jaron just looked so small and afraid and alone when he was standing up. "Hey," he said, "is everything alright?"


His gaze dropped down to his legs. He didn't say anything the first minute after James addressed him, quietly thinking over what he had said. "Yeah," he finally answered. His voice wasn't that high, only a little more than a whisper. "I have been through my share of it."

Raiden slid over to where the glass girl and that other dude was.
"Hey, quick question: you said before 'I think, therefore I am,' right? So, does that mean you can change forms?"

"I thought so," James replied softly. "You weren't exactly subtly hinting at it a second ago."

He gave a small nod of the head. "I admit I was hoping you would notice."

Jaron grabbed wet sand in his hand, ready to scream, but hesitated. This was almost certainly the guy who had seen him as a wolf earlier. Yet, the guy wasn't making fun of him for it? On the contrary - the guy had lowered himself to eye level, looked concerned for Jaron, and had alerted Kendrik (at least, Jaron was pretty sure that he'd heard Kendrik earlier) where they were. Instead, Jaron set the sand down, made a noise that sounded like a squeak, and nodded.

Then he spotted Kendrik out of the corner of his eye. The hound ran over and fell on his knees, spraying sand in all directions as he reached Jaron and gave him a hug. Jaron looked to Reyes and nodded a bit more.

Adeline bared her teeth in a sad excuse for a grin at the smell comment.

"Thank you...?"

She turned to the new stranger that had walked in and scooted back toward the entrance, feeling very cornered.

"No. I was simply stating the reason I know I'm alive. I can't shape-shift, unfortunately, unless you count becoming goopy in intense heat and brittle in the cold."

She figeted with her tunic, starting to get claustrophobic.

He nodded. "So... how many of thousands of years did you suffer before things got better?" James asked.