Outside the house Emmeline had grown up in for the last years of her life, the street fell away off the hard edge of a cliff into the swamp she'd swum through to get to where she was. This was the view she'd seen out of the window of her room. Now outside, she wondered how the house was even saying balanced.
She needn't have wondered, as her feet left the doorstep and made the five paces to the gate, the crunching roar of old bricks falling way met her ears and chased her as she made it out the gate and back up the empty road.
Completely unsure of how far Geras had brought her from the gates, she paused, and took a deep breath before she made the decision to head into the east, along the plateau that bordered the world and the gates, in search of the Ferryman she needed to continue her crossing.
And, she didn't look back.
Rain fell down over the dead waste before her, and the jungle began to grow, like the wasteland which had paved her way toward the gates, now this new world grew up around her as she walked away.
"I am going to end up talking to myself. I'm going to end up a crazy old woman who has entire conversations with myself out loud while I feed my twenty five cats and water my thirteen pink orchids." Internally she wasn't sure why there would specifically be twenty five cats and thirteen pink orchids but details are everything when you are trying to tell yourself that you are still sane, yet stuck between two worlds.
Acid rain?
"But of course there will be one that always blooms white," she added after a few more paces, "and I won't have the heart to get rid of it."
Open rain and wind on the cliff top slowly gave way to a jungle land that swallowed her whole, so deep and thick that under the boughs of the vines and branches it was as dark as night, with stale air and dust collecting on the dying leaves, a world half-alive, half-dead. As she climbed forward, picking her path forward has quickly as she could, a stray root caught her foot amidst her muttering about the colour of orchids and she went head first to the ground, with her palms out. She let out a short yelp before righting herself and brushing the dust off her knees.
"No wonder he was so fucking dusty," she muttered to herself. When she had first met Charon on earth he had been covered in this same dust. Which of course told her that she was in the right place. He had to be here. But where? And why? Why wasn't he here with her? She had honestly thought they had formed some kind of half decent bond in the time they had spent together. He'd protected her instead of delivering her to her death as he was supposed to. They'd kissed for God's sake. He'd also had his eyeballs ripped out of his skull for the privilege of trying to protect her. And then they had still kissed.
Perhaps if the kiss had happened before the eyeballs-being-ripped-out part then Emmeline would have questioned his level of feeling toward her, understandably. But no, the kiss had definitely happened after the eyeballs. And, Emmeline reasoned, if you are still prepared to kiss a girl after you've had your eyeballs ripped out on account of her, then surely that means something?
She fell again.
"Mother—" Emmeline caught herself short of swearing again. Swearing lost impact after a certain time of having no one to listen to it.
This time she stayed where she fell. It was out in the open, a little gap where the rain trickled down in a welcome shower between the branches and vines, and it was calming to just lie there, out in the open, feeling the rain trickle over her face, into her eyes and down her neck. The rain didn't bite any more, but it stung as the ash ran into her eyes. She squeezed them shut and took another deep breath before pushing herself up again, and continuing her journey of questionable direction east through the thick jungle undergrowth.
The worst thing about walking by oneself is that after you finish talking to yourself, you start talking to people in your mind, reliving conversations that have already taken place, and dwelling over things you shouldn't.
Emmeline guessed it had been about twenty four hours that she'd been stuck in between, and even though time felt somehow not quite normal here, it was plenty enough time for her to start chewing over the entirety of her relationship with Charon.
When she had met Charon, she had called him a monster, and he'd turned around and asked her, "Well, what does that make you then?"
She was even more an monster, a curious kind of abomination created by her father in order to contrive the perfect, worthy sacrifice to open the door between worlds and ferry him home.
Home.
To here.
It was an easy progression of thought to lead Emmeline to questioning why any man or beast would want to be here, stuck between. And to question how her father would have opened the gates without Charon's assistance.
Because, of course, she assumed that Charon was the way past that hideous three headed arachnid and into the world beyond.
She wiped the rain out of her eyes with a level of determination, blinking away the acid sting. Up ahead she saw a clearing, and movement within it.