My girlfriend has been babysitting a couple of kids all day. So I’ve been killing time by writing. This one I wrote in response to another reddit post, this time on r/SimplePrompts. The original post can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SimplePrompts/comments/94ua65/dark_green_wet_fur_and_an_echo/?utm_source=reddit-android
David woke to the sound of echoing water droplets. It was a slow, ordered sound, and it only made him realize how thirsty his was.
His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. Each breath he took seemed to catch in his parched throat. As he emerged from the depths of unconsciousness he became aware of a throbbing pain and sticky wetness on the left side of his head.
He tried to open his eyes and found them to be sealed them shut.
He cursed himself as the memories came back to him. They had been within sight of home when the pirates had boarded their ship. The pirates’ wizard had conjured a thick mist, allowing them to come within range without being spotted.
David cursed himself for his carelessness. Proximity to home had made him overconfident, and that had gotten his men killed. The crew had been unready to face the boarding parties that had materialized out of the mist. They had made David watch as most of his crew was slaughtered. While he himself had been bound, and a cloth bag had been placed over his head.
They had come ashore somewhere. Where exactly he could not say. But the clean smell of the air told him that it was no port that he knew. They had led him along for some time, across rough terrain where he had struggled to keep his footing. Eventually they had stopped, someone had hit him on the side of his head, and he had been left there.
He needed to open his eyes, he decided. His hands were found in front of him. But he was able to bring them up to his face. Through the thick cloth he rubbed his eyes, trying to scrape away whatever was holding them shut.
Blood. It was blood, he realized.
The dried blood tore at his eyelashes as it was removed, but slowly he was able to open them.
Small pinpricks of light shined through the dark green fabric that covered his face.
“Ok,” he said to himself, “Where am I?” At first he had suspected a cave, plenty of pirates maintained hideouts that they hid throughout the islands. It made storing loot and prisoners a far easier task. The rocks beneath him, the dripping water; and the damp, musty smell of the air had all screamed cave. But the lighting was natural, there was sky above him.
David decided it was time to take the bag off. It wasn’t secured tightly. But he could feel now that the blood had dried and stuck the cloth to his scalp.
He grabbed ahold of the bag, braced himself, and pulled.
Fresh blood flowed as the scabs tore away with the cloth. He resisted the urge to cry out. Hair followed, he didn’t look to see how much he had lost.
Sunlight blinded him. While his eyes adjusted he occupied himself by climbing to his feet.
Slowly his eyes adjusted to the light. David was soon surprised to learn that he was in a cave afterall. It’s rounded walls rose up around a grouping of shallow streams. Sunlight poured in through holes in the ceiling that gave it a honeycomb-like appearance.
He bent down to the water and tasted it. Those few drops of water felt like honey on his tongue, and he drank until he felt as if he might burst.
David rose back up to his feet, and looked along the steam in both directions. The water was flowing from his left, and headed towards his right. Save for that once difference, both directions seemed to be roughly equal. Both were lit by ample quantities of natural light, and in both directions there was a roughly cut path along the edge of the stream.
“Strange hideout,” he said quietly. He decided that his next order of business would be to cut the ropes.
To his left he spotted an assortment of bones lying in the water. Their time in the sunlight had bleached them white, and the water had worn smooth their broken edges. Still he thought he might find a broken one with a sharp enough edge to cut the rope.
He began walking upstream, searching the water for the implement that would free up. As he did, the musky scent that he had detected earlier grew stronger, and as he turned a bend he was greeted by a much larger cave, in which sat a huge mass of glistening, wet, fur.
David recoiled from the sight and nearly ran. Every instinct he had told him to run. But he gathered up his courage and approached it slowly. If he was going to escape those caves, he thought, it would do him well to know what else was trapped with him.
Upon closer inspection he realized that the creature resembled a six-legged wolf that also happened to be the size of a house. It’s entire body, save for its snout, was covered in the same wet fur. A single closed eyelid dominated it’s face. Jagged yellow teeth stuck out of its bald snout at odd angles.
He considered the fact that if he was careful, he might be able to cut his bonds on the creature’s teeth. Carefully, he moved even closer.
An outcropping of rock caught his foot and he tripped. He steadied himself, but not before he had kicked a small assortment of pebbles across the chamber. In the otherwise silent cave, each pebble sounded like a gong as they skipped along the floor.
He heard the creature stirring. Felt its hot breath on his face as it shifted to face him.
Reluctantly, David raised his head to face the creature. He quickly went over his options, he could see only two. He could run, if he did the creature was sure to chase him and snatch him up in its powerful jaws. Or he could fight, and probably die.
He snatched up a loose stone from the ground and held it tight between his hands.
He would fight.