HAZE

PEEK-A-BOO

He couldn't breathe.

Darkness blocked out his vision, leaving him blind to whatever surrounded him. He could feel hands (or were they claws?) grabbing his arms, his legs, reaching into his chest and through his head, pulling and tugging him in every possible direction. Garbled words fell on deaf ears as he tried to pull himself free—really, he did—but the more he tried—

Ping!

--something pulled him back.

"H e l p," his voice--or someone else's--echoed in the murky black. "H e l p..."

As the voice faded, the realization dawned on him that no, that wasn't his voice, because he hadn't opened his mouth--he couldn't even breathe right.

No, the voice wasn't his, but his brother's.

He became frantic. He struggled, choked on the disgusting, chalky mass filling his mouth, spitting and biting and screaming—

But nobody heard him.

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't feel; something heavy and cold washing over him, pulling him apart at the seams, at his soul—

"No!"

Wingdings sat up in the snow, gasping for air. Slowly, his vision cleared, chest heaving as he gasped for air.

He was fine. He was—

...sitting in snow?

"What the..." Dings looked around, confirming his fears. Snow piled around him, falling from the black sky above him. An occasional snowflake glitched and sputtered in front of him, to his surprise, but fell on its usual path as though nothing were wrong.

Wingdings couldn't comprehend it. There wasn't snow a few minutes ago, he thought. Besides, Frisk had said it only snowed in the winter--it's not wintertime, is it?

Frowning, he turned to say something to Aster—

--who wasn't there.

"Aster?" Dings climbed to his feet at once, stumbling for a moment. His head felt like it was filled with cotton. "Aster, where'd you go?"

Silence.

Wingdings tapped his thumbs together, taking a couple steps forward--and jumped when a sign suddenly appeared in front of him.

"Ah!"

Falling back, snow flying up in the air upon impact, he fell into a pile of fresh snow, glaring at the black display above him. The snow settled back down around him, in its own, malfunctioning way.

Wingdings groaned, pulling himself back up. The sign, he realized, wasn't there anymore. What...

Standing, he took a step forward.

Fizzing specs of white, grey and black popped into existence, before falling away into the sign.

"...Whoa."

Stepping closer, he brushed a hand across the smudged text, squinting to read the faded letters: SNOWDIN TOWN.

"Snowdin..." How'd I end up Underground? He wondered.

Sighing, he turned away from the sign, taking a few steps to the right. A path--one he recognized from his rare visits to the town Inn--opened up in front of him, respectively.

"This is weird," he mumbled to himself, shaking his head. He looked around him, squinting through the haze as snow crunched underfoot. "...Aster? Aster, are you around?"