Emmeline, the girl in the storm

Into the east

Exactly how Emmeline made it to the top of the valley wall, she didn't know. She only heard the moment the top-heavy arachnid lost purchase on the cliff face and with a hissing howl, tumbled over upon his shining black belly again and again toward the valley floor.

For an almost comical moment, the beast struggled to untangle his eight legs from his collection of heads, but he soon found the will to stand, and shake off the trauma of his fall before flicking his whitetail angrily and mooching back toward the gate he guarded.

Emmeline wondered for a moment if a heart could burst from exertion, or perhaps a lung collapse? Maybe both lungs.

At least the rain had stopped.

She dropped her head to the ground, and finally passed out.

*

"C'mon kid, get the hell up."

Waking dirty and sweaty is one of the worst sensations. Point blank.

Maybe worse than waking up and remembering you are exhausted because a fucking eight-legged, three-headed monstrosity of a spider had chased you up a sheer cliff-face.

Actually maybe it was all just worse, and bad, and terrible.

But then, like a golden light shattering through it all, "You stink. You stink like a thousand rats on a thousand underground station platforms."

Emmeline grunted, and wiped sweat off her face, out of her sunken eye-sockets. Then, unimaginably, she smiled, with her eyes still closed, because she was afraid that once she opened them, the dream would stop.

"Hey kid." Her grandfather barked at her between two hearty coughs.

Her eyes fluttered open. There was light streaming in the window. Everything was still, peaceful. The only piece of existence in that moment that wasn't peaceful, was Emmeline's heart.

"Why did you go?" Emmeline asked him immediately. Their fondness had always been unspoken, so she didn't feel bad jumping to the heart of the problem. 'Hey kid' was as affectionate as he would get.

He grunted, much in a similar fashion as she had, suggesting it was a habit she had learned. If she was calmer, she may have noticed and been annoyed by it, but she wasn't calm.

He let out one harsh laugh upon taking a closer look at her facial expression, and unleashed a smile on her that encompassed all of her existence until that point.

Finally she felt peace.

"You knew I had to go, Emmeline," he reached a hand to her cheek and chucked it with his knuckles, in the same way he would have stolen her nose when she was young enough to believe it.

"But you are here now," she argued.

He nodded slowly. "But I'm waiting just like you are,"

"Waiting for what?"

"For the Ferryman to come open that bloody gate, what else?!" Geras snorted.

"But where is he?" Emmeline felt herself tearing up like a baby again, "He was supposed to be here with me."

Geras shrugged his ancient shoulders, "That's your mess, not mine."

Emmeline frowned, "Well, sometimes you just have to do it by yourself."

"Get through the gate?"

"Yeah,"

Geras shook his head, "Hhhhmmm, I don't know that you can. Not without him. Why'd you think we're all stuck out here?"

"All? I assumed you were some kind of projection of my imagination."

"Figment."

"Yes," Emmeline agreed with his correction, dourly, "a figment of my imagination."