[Celtic]

Never been one to walk alone, always been afraid to try.

Way to start a walk- crappy song lyrics. Jemma was disgusted with herself. Oh well- worse has happened. Specially in the past few weeks. Why was life such shit? Another paw landed on the ground marking the end of her thoughts. This walk was supposed to be calming but instead it looked like it was just going to make her worse. But she wasn't in the mood to be with friends or family or anything of the sort. She just wanted to be alone and to be far, far away from herself. That did not seem likely, so the least she could do was go have a pity party where no one would see her.

Everywhere was so crowded nowadays. There was nowhere you could go alone and at least here in the caverns she didn't have to see the people around her. Didn't have to look up and smile- pretend she was okay. Put the mask on and let it fall again. Over and over. It was getting so tiring. She was done faking and done dealing with just everyone around her. Alone. To be alone was to be peaceful and to be peaceful was to be alone. At least for now it was.

Another few steps of silence. Dripping echoed through the cave as Jemma's mind went silent. But then- like it had to- the wheels began anew.

Just what was she doing with her life? Two months ago there was a plan. A good and solid plan. One that would work and that she thought would make her happy. Now- she just wanted something new. Something different and excited. She didn't want the old plan but she didn't have any other ideas. No other plans. She wasn't sure- something she hadn't felt in a while. Maybe she was just getting cold feet. Maybe she should go ahead with the old and pray to god she was not going to fuck this up too. Who knows- in two months she'll be as sure as ever. Hopefully this was just a phase. If not... Well god help her. Maybe she'll end up taking a gap year. But another year in her house might kill her. So no, that wasn't an option.

What am I going to do?

Jemma was nearly at the point of melt down. Sometimes it came down too hard- there was just a bit too much. She broke. But she hadn't broken yet. Not today. Tears would not flow today. They couldn't- she was above all that. She just had troubles but other people had it worse. It would get better. It will get better. She told herself.

If she said it enough- she might even believe it.

[Celtic]

Landing a job. What place would even accept me!
Going to college. Have to write that bloody essay
Going far, far away from here.
Out of the country? No- to expensive.

It wasn't just being told no by everyone else- even the universe it seemed was crushing all her dreams at the same time. Each new paw print brought up a new topic or just something else that wasn't going to happen. Everything she had ever hoped for had gone away and gone down the drain. Where were her friends? Where were those people that said they cared?

Gone.

She'd driven them away long ago. There wasn't anything left for her anymore. She could die and it felt like no one would come to her funeral. Being down was shit. Plain and simple. School had ended and it felt like so did her life. Everyone moved on and she was left in that little shit town with her family and nothing else. Everyone she loved left her. Everyone she even just liked had slowly trickled away. Either sucked up by college or a boyfriend that seemed to take every second of their day. She just wasn't important anymore. Wasn't important and wasn't interesting to anyone. It had to change. Just had to. She wasn't going to be that deadbeat that showed up at a high school reunion hyped up on drugs and living in the slums. She was going to be someone eventually. It was going to happen.

She just had to get started.

[Celtic]

He chuckled and his chuckling filled the caverns. Oh what a life. He loved the sweet echo through the endless winding tunnels. He loved the emptiness, he loved the sweet, sweet damp air, he loved the ability to scare the living piss out of anyone he wanted. Oh, what a life. The carpetfang yawned as he continued to wake up. Days, nights were meaningless. He slept when he wanted, he woke when he wanted. He was truly king of his domain.

"Oh what to do, what to do," the giant beast wondered aloud. Of course, there weren't too many options. He existed in (mostly) empty caverns, and he had for many years. Once, some unknown amount of time ago, he ventured to view the world. It was awful. You had to sleep at night, you had to follow rules and be decent and it was awful hard to sneak up on people. It was much, much better down here in his beloved caverns.

A grumbling sound filled his ears. Ah, yes. He was hungry. Time to hunt.

[Celtic]

The first tear fell down Jem's face. Angry at it, she shook her head and continued into the cavern. She didn't even know really why she was here-- honestly the caverns terrified her. They were empty, damp, cold and dark. There was nothing in there for her, and yet she was drawn forward. Her paws seemed to act of their own accord, pulling her step by step farther and farther away from her pitiful, average life.

Another tear.

"For the love of Zu'hai girl! Get your shit together!" She sternly whispered to herself. Jemma was really not a fan of crying and the weakness it showed, but right now she couldn't control herself. As more tears fell, her heart started beating faster, and her breathing was shallow. Eventually she couldn't stand it and broke into a sprint into the caverns.

She ran and ran, taking random turns, not thinking. Just getting farther and farther away from home. She needed space. She needed to disappear.

[Celtic]

Jem ran right into a wall. Face first and she crumpled up like a can. She laid on the ground for a while, not thinking, just dazed. She might've lost consciousness, but she wasn't sure. She was, she wasn't and she was again.

A faint sound finally reached her-- w-was that laughter? It seemed like she was just hearing an echo, so hopefully it was far, far away. Jem opened her eyes-- and found that she was in complete darkness. Honestly it's impressive she ran so far without colliding with the caverns. There wasn't a single shred of light anywhere. Her head spun, searching for something- anything. Any indication of which direction she had come from.

No light.

Jemma felt her heart begin to race and forced herself to breathe. Panicking would only make things worse. So naturally, her brain turned to depressed.

I am going to die here. Oh my god. No one will even know, they'll just think I ran away. No one knows I'm here. I'm going to starve.

[Celtic]

Drip, drip..... drip.

It was dank and musty, and quiet. I guess quiet is good... But then she thought of the laughter she heard. The faint echo of another creature. Maybe I just imagined it. Jemma really wasn't sure how long she'd been lying here, but it seemed so pointless to continue moving. She was lost in these massive caverns and no one was coming for her.

So she did the one thing that comes most naturally to angsty teenagers -- she threw her head on the ground and let out a long, drawn out groan.

[Celtic]

Jem probably shouldn't have groaned. Or dropped her head so heavily. The carpetfang felt the vibrations echo through the caverns. A big smile graced his face, he had found his breakfast. Oh it had been a while since he'd eaten anything but those slimy snickies or the creepy akails that lived here. Neither were particularly tasty, and oh the akails were so much work. He only hunted them when he was desperate. Let's not forget those stupid Morloths. If he ever needed to floss, he needed to go no further than catch that squirmy, tough little creature. They were stringy at best, it was awful, but it was food.

No this sound had to come from a surface pet. They were all so soft -- which was great for eating, but he had no respect for them. Perhaps this one would be entertaining at least. It'd been a while and he could really go for some socialization. Again the great beast chuckled and remembered the stories of dragons that kept humans as their pets. Word had it the human would clean their dragon's hoard, make feasts for them and keep them entertained, until eventually the dragon grew tired of them and ate them. Maybe he'd do that. He'd keep this one as a pet -- provided it was entertaining enough. What a wonderful plan. What a wonderful, evil plan.

[Celtic]

The most annoying part about having wingblades was that she couldn't just roll over. She had to get up and readjust, which was just stupid. Other animals could just roll but no her ancestors had to have these weird, useless crystalline blades on their back. Jemma huffed. Maybe she should get moving after all. If no one was coming for her, maybe she should at least try to survive.

She heard laughing again. Maybe that was bad. Laughing in otherwise silent caverns wasn't exactly a good sign. Jemma stood and immediately bonked her head the wall. Great. This is fantastic. She moved slightly away from the wall and tried again. Whew, made it. She was, successfully standing. Now, she just needed to find the direction this cave went in, and hopefully it was back the way she came. Jemma had lost all sense of direction through -- the darkness was really taking a toll.

Am I going to go blind? Jemma remembered vaguely hearing that being in total darkness for too long rendered vision useless. Shit shit shit. This was definitely her worst idea yet. Contrary to what her actions may say, she did not want to die.

[Celtic]

He was taking his sweet time crawling through the caves, honing in on the surface pet. He could almost taste how scared she must be. Fear was so, so sweet. The longer he hunted, the more scared the little thing would get. The darkness did odd and terrible things to surface dwellers. Not him-- never him. The darkness was comforting, like a heavy blanket.

A low hiss emanated from the big crawling creature. It's slow frequency vibrated through the caverns, surely the pet would pick up on it. He was getting fairly close...

[Celtic]

Jemma was lying still on the cold floor. Somewhere between content with dying in this hole and ready to fight for her life. To put it frankly, Jemma was being dramatic. She was thinking back to her early days as a sweet little pup. Her siblings, her parents. Oh she'd never see any of them again. Were they even worried about her?

She flopped onto her side and groaned again. She wasn't quite despairing-- the actual gravity of the situation hadn't hit her yet. She was truly living up to that invincibility fallacy.

Ssssssssssssssssssssssss

Jemma felt more than heard the hiss and popped up onto her feet.... And hit her head again. There was definitely something else in these caves with her, but she couldn't tell where the noise came from. Her sense of direction was almost completely gone. It's a miracle she was still able to tell up from down.

[Celtic]

The great wyrm was disappointed. His prey had opted to give up and forgo their life rather than try to run through the caverns. He could tell because well, there wasn't any skittering to be heard. Oh well, might as well get this part over with. He began to move quickly, with purpose, towards the lucain girl. Hopefully this one would at least be pleasing to converse with, these caves were getting a tad boring.

He entered the room and instantly circled around the lucain. He felt her heart racing and she balled up as small as she could while instinctively putting her little blades on the attack. He chuckled. "Why hello there little prey, what brings you into my cave here?"

[Celtic]

Jem chose to ignore her beating heart and tingling paws as much as she could. There was no escape for her-- she couldn't even see what was going to eat her. "I'm upset. Why else would I try and escape the world and end up here without any supplies." Man, what a time to go full-blown teenager.

His chuckle filled the room. "I suppose you have a point. Say, how about I take you for a little ride?" Somehow his bad mood disappeared with the sass this girl offered.

"Well do I have a choice?"

"No, you don't." And with that he whipped out of the cave, grabbing the lucain with his tail taking precautions not to poke himself with those pesky wingblades of theirs.

[Celtic]

Getting wrapped up by a giant, unknown creature that referred to you as prey is not exactly ideal. Jemma was firstly, horribly prone to motion sickness which was made worse by the lack of visual feedback available in these caves and secondly, she was really confused as to why in the world he was taking her to a second location. If she was truly prey and he was going to eat her why not just do it? But that was the extent of her thought process as her stomach threatened to expel its contents.

[Celtic]

When the monster finally put her down, Jemma immediately collapsed and focused on breathing hard. Chike circled around her curiously. He had made the little thing ill it seemed. Interesting. He had taken those turns pretty hard, but she seemed like she'd recover. Chike went around his personal cave, lighting torches.

Jemma recovered just enough to look around, she was in a... mess of a cave it appeared. There was dust on everything, bones lying about... There were some organized piles of things, but it'd been years since they were touched. What in the world was going on? Why did he take her to his home?

"Wh-why am I here?"

"Well little one, you're going to clean for me! Shouldn't that be obvious?" He said cheerfully.

"Are you... Are you going to eat me?"

"Oh, it's possible. But not yet. You're going to be useful."

[Celtic]

Useful? Jemma groaned inwardly. Leave it to her to be captured by a beast that was going to make her do chores before it eats her. "Why would I be useful if you're just going to eat me? I feel like that's a lose-lose situation for me." She was already dead, why not argue a little bit beforehand?

The girl made a halfway decent point. If he was going to eat her either way-- she had no real motivation to do his chores. "Hmm... Fine. You clean and I won't eat you. I'll just have to go hunting again."

Jemma contemplated this. "Like you won't eat me ever? How can I trust you?"

"No, I won't ever eat you." The carpetfang rolled his eyes. "You just have to know that a noble beast such as myself has pride and standards. My word is my word!"