Chapter Text
It was pitch black. There was nothing surrounding you except for the encroaching earth that was piled tight on all corners. You are completely and utterly alone, the only thing to keep you company being your thoughts.
Eins?
Zwei?
You call out to your brothers day in and out, but never do you get a reply. It had been like this for some time now. The details are fuzzy, but all you remember is a man burying you in the ground. It seemed like you were being thrown into a shallow grave, though you don’t know why. You’d never done anything to wrong someone, at least not intentionally and neither had your brothers. The only thing you could think of that led to all of this was the vague, yet frightening thoughts of a golden triangle peering down at you with a single eye. The image of the being sends shivers down your spine, both figuratively and physically. There’s no telling what this otherworldly creature could mean, but you know it isn’t anything good.
Time begins to crawl to a stand still. You lost track of what time it is, what day it is. You don’t even know what year it is anymore. All concepts of time passing have stopped having meaning. All there is is you and the six corners of earth suffocating you. There’s no room to turn into a human to try and break the stagnation. You have only your thoughts. You feel like crying, but no tears come. Your ink only bubbles and runs before being quickly dried by your numerous pages. At some point, you can’t even make yourself do that. You sit in the same position, never moving; forever stuck in a pit you can’t escape. This will be your grave.
Eins?
Zwei?
No response.
You’ve come to accept your fate; doomed to stay in a pit without any inclination as to why or how you got there in the first place. It’s almost peaceful in a sense. You no longer have to worry about what your life may have been like before this. Sure, you’d much rather have your brothers and memories, bu- No. You can’t even lie to yourself. There is no upside to this, though you will still contend that the silence had become a welcome friend as opposed to a hated enemy. As you dipped further into the bowels of insanity, you could find some comfort in knowing that it was starting to feel less like a death sentence and more like a tranquil resting place. Every once and a while, you’d feel signs of life above you. Footsteps of those outside your prison would occasionally flatten the earth just enough to where you knew there was something above. There would be the odd whisper in hushed voices, but not often. Whatever was above usually passed by alone or stayed quiet. The voices kept you from going completely off the deep end.
On one particular day, there’s a lot of activity from above. The unmistakable sounds of footsteps patter on a mere few feet on the surface. At first you think nothing of it. Why should you? Everyone up to this point had walked right on by without ever knowing of your existence. They simply have no way of knowing that buried beneath a pile of dirt, there’s a journal beneath the ground. You only give the noise your attention for the same reason you’d always had-to keep yourself sane. It’s only until you hear mechanical like noises that gives you pause.
Gears turn. Rough ground shifts. As you continue to listen to the footsteps to get an idea as to what is happening, the solid earth above you begins to split apart. What once was cold earth is replaced by a thin sheet of metal. For a moment you think you’re hallucinating, but the clear indentation of the ground above proves otherwise. This isn’t fake. Maybe you’ve spiraled down so far that you can’t even tell the difference. Regardless of what your mind may or may not be dreaming up, one undeniable fact is that something changed. Just as you feel yourself becoming tempted to turn human so you can paw at the metal sheet, the sound of metal scraping against metal invades your small grave. With utter shock you watch rays of sunshine beam down into the darkened abyss, unearthing you for the first time in what felt like centuries. You felt like crying.
The source of the footsteps soon reveals itself when a young boy cautiously walks over to you. Frozen in both fear and shock, the strange boy picks you up, blowing off some of the dust that had built up on your cover for decades. You feel his pulse. Flesh and bone all working together to form cohesive movements. A heart that pumps blood to vital organs to keep him alive. Memories of once taking on your human form flood your thoughts, reminding you how much you’d missed being able to move of your own accord. Being able to speak, move, touch…It meant you could make your own choices, but more importantly, it meant you wouldn’t be forced to stay buried.
The gentle breeze tickled at your cover and spine. The sunshine reflected off the hand print emblazoned on your front and made very light shimmers on the human’s face. Noises of wildlife sound off all around you. For the first time in many years, you can feel something that isn’t the ground or your own depressive thoughts. You feel alive.
Looking to your savior, you get the strangest feeling that you know him somehow. You know you’ve never met this kid a day in your life, though there was an air of familiarity about him. His clothes are strange and don’t match what you remember was in style before being left to the worms. The only thing that looks remotely recognizable is the shape of a star on his hat. Still, even with that said, he’s eerily familiar. You get the feeling you can trust him despite having never interacting with him before. It feels comforting.
With the freedom to move in your old human form, you can’t stop yourself from fighting the urge to change. In the blink of an eye, your book form is now replaced with that of a human in their late teens. You don’t even have to look at yourself to know you’re filthy. You can feel it. Being dropped to the ground by the boy holding you, you let out a grunt as the boy let’s out a shrill scream that echoes for miles.