Roots | ONC 2024

VIII : Sink

Shanirin doesn't know if he's ever felt urgency like this before. The kind that spurs on his body outside of his will. Keep moving, you will die if you stop, it feels like.

Umi might die if you stop.

Shanirin inhales a sharp breath, grits his teeth to hold back the sobs clawing their way up his throat. His vision has long since blurred with the stream of tears that pours from his eyes. He stumbles his way back to the hollow tree, half blindly grasps his way inside of it, basically trips over the gate of the pulley and finally grabs the lever inside it that will take him back up and pulls it. The pulley creaks as it begins to ascend.

He can feel his blood flow deep beneath his skin, feels it rush from his hammering heart, he can feel his bones shift with his body. Umi was taken. He sacrificed himself to save Shanirin.

Umi's gone.

Shanirin's jaw clenches harder as a tide of searing pain grips his chest, drowns his soul in its ocean. Umi can't be gone. Everything else can be gone, but not Umi. Not his little one.

The short while it takes to reach the top lasts several eternities, and he only cries harder as he stands there. Despite his best efforts to hold himself together long enough to run to the council, the sobbing still rips him apart at the seams, and he gasps for air through it.

Whatever that Elder wants with Umi can't be good, and Shani can hardly bear the thought of it harming him.

Finally, finally, the pulley slots into place at the top and stops. Shanirin rushes out, dragging the two soil baskets with him. He'd have tossed them away, but Umi wanted him to bring them to the people, and Shanirin can't disappoint him anymore than he already has.

He's supposed to be the caretaker of the two of them. The protector. But he failed to keep Umi safe today, and that guilt burns.

As he meanders across the various bridges toward the council's den, Shanirin tries in vain to draw in breath, stop crying. The tears simply just keep coming. He barely feels the ache of his sore body from the battle, fueled by fright so utterly visceral it permeates all hollows of his being. He tastes ash on his tongue.

Umi has to be okay. Shanirin's world will end otherwise.

He takes the last bridge toward the den, urging himself to calm down, hard as it is. It's going to be okay, he will tell the council what happened and then they will organize a search party to go find Umi and bring him home. That's gotta be the course of action here, Shanirin can't imagine anything else. That notion is mildly comforting, just enough to allow his body to stop seizing with sobs, to return himself to a modicum of sense.

He reaches the front entrance of the council's den then and rushes in, dropping the two baskets in the hall. All of the councilors are there, thankfully, sitting behind a table curved like a crescent moon at the back of the room, following the den's round shape.

Councilman Bnirin rises to his feet first when he sees the state of Shanirin, and steps out from his seat, makes his way around to Shanirin, "What happened? Where is Umirin?" he asks, a frown etched into his brow.

The words burst like a river from Shanirin's mouth, pouring out so rapidly they are barely legible, "We were attacked by an Elder and tried to fight it off, but it was too strong and overpowered us. It was about to bite me but Umirin struck a bargain with it to save me and now it's taken him away and—"

"Woah, easy now. Please, speak sensibly," Bnirin interrupts Shanirin's rambling.

Shani sniffles and nods, taking a breath to try to explain himself better. His voice shakes like the rest of him, "Umi struck a bargain with the Elder to save me and the Elder took him away into the woods somewhere. We have to go find him," he repeats, his eyes wide and trained on Bnirin.