They had used almost all of their flower line, they had only a couple lengths left for this specific passage. Each time they reached an impasse they would laboriously roll the line back up and choose a different corridor. It was damp and humid down here, and Sym could feel her makeup melting down her face. If she was anything like Iseult, she must look like a wreck. But like, in a kind of punk princesses way? It actually wasn’t a bad look, she thought dispassionately.
Iseult’s glittery spray had long since succumbed to the scent of the earth, and Sym was surprised to find herself missing it. The earth smelled like something very old, old and arcane. It was an intimidating smell. Was this how Grandmother had felt? Her muted footsteps followed her eerily. The heavy stifling feeling of knowing that at any moment she could be crushed by tons of hard unforgiving rock. Sym shivered, and it wasn’t all the damp chilliness of the tunnels.
Iseult’s pocket light, incidentally also pink, flickered in the passage, and Sym half wished it would completely go out, forcing them to give up their search. Her feet hurt. And her shoulders from carrying the rope. Iseult had called flash light duty, so most of the rope had fallen to Sym and she was a bit resentful.
‘Wait!’ Iseult called, her flashlight catching on something glittering just up ahead. ‘What is that!?’ She ran ahead towards the sparkle. ‘Wait, Iseult!’ Sym called out, just as Iseult went down, her screech just covering the slap of her body hitting the floor. ‘Oh gods oh gods oh gods.’ She chanted, clutching her leg, her eyes scrunched up in pain, tears running tracks of black eye liner down her face. ‘Please, please look at it for me, Sym. I can’t, it hurts too much, I can’t look.’ Sym bent down, dropping the remainder of the flower line to the floor as she recovered the light from where Iseult had dropped it.
‘Shshsh.’ She hushed, trying to sooth her friend. ‘Can you move your hands, I can’t quite see,’ she gently coaxed. ‘Oh gods. Ok.’ Iseult slowly moved her hands up her leg, not releasing her grip, her knuckles pale as she squeezed her own flesh. ‘I don’t see a bone, it’s just really swollen.’ Sym said, aiming to comfort her. ‘Don’t say that!’ Iseult shrieked, ‘‘I don’t see bone’ that’s, that’s oh gods, what if it’s broken?’ Iseult wailed, inconsolable. Sym privately thought there was a good chance it was just a sprain, but she wasn’t going to say anything to upset Iseult more than she already was. ‘Here, can you stand up at all? Lean on me,’ she looped Iseult’s arm over her shoulder, and held her waist, trying to stay as steady as possible as Iseult put more of her weight onto her.
‘Hold on, we have to check what it was that was glittering!’ Iseult said, hesitating as Sym started to help her hop back the way they’d come. ‘You’re still thinking about that?’ Sym exclaimed. She really hoped they would be able to get out ok, they had been walking for a while. Her Mother and Grandmother thought she was at Iseult’s and Iseult’s didn’t care, so no one would be looking for them for at least several hours. ‘If we don’t check it, this will have all been for nothing! I’m not breaking my leg for nothing!’ Iseult insisted. She had a bit of a point.
Sym gingerly helped her sit back down, making sure she was well balanced before taking the flash light over to the glittering object. ‘What is it?’ Iseult called. ‘I…it’s a skull.’ She said, swallowing heavily. Would that be them if they didn’t get out? Wait, no, there was something lodged in it. A sort of faintly fluorescing crystal, growing in the skull’s eye like a geode. Taking a deep breath, she picked it up, bringing it over to show Iseult. Please don’t haunt me for this, she thought fervently. ‘Ew! You’re touching it!’ Iseult exclaimed, recognizing the shape in Sym’s hand. ‘Look Izzy, look at what’s in its eye.’ With her nose wrinkled, the pain of a broken ankle apparently secondary to the disgust she felt for the skull, Iseult examined the skull. ‘Huh. And it’s kind of glowing.’ She looked up at Sym, her eyes wide and excited. ‘Do you think this is godseed?!’
It was slow going making their way back. They left the flower rope where it fell, figuring it could be used to retrace their steps in the future, and it was just too much to carry. Sym held Iseult and Iseult held the skull, much to her displeasure. Oh, right, Iseult was the one with the short end of the stick, Sym thought, disgruntled at being the one carrying the heavy weight again while all Iseult had to do was keep track of what was essentially a big rock.
Sym hadn’t realized just how deep they had come. Eventually it became a little easier to breath, the ventilation from the sub basement the first indicator they were nearing the end of their hour-long trek, made longer by the many breaks they had to take. They were both exhausted. In the beginning they had talked to keep optimistic, Sym doing her best to ease Iseult’s pain by keeping her mind off her ankle, but eventually she didn’t have the breath to spare. Iseult’s pained grunts were their only accompaniment for the last hour or so, and they both flopped to the floor when they reached the sub basement again, Iseult much more carefully than Sym, both of them panting heavily. ‘There is no way we’re going to be able to sneak out of here with your ankle.’ Sym pointed out, once she got her breathing back under control. ‘I know,’ Iseult said in a quiet voice, uncharacteristically cowed by the situation. ‘We may as well just ask someone to call an emergency vehicle, no sense in drawing it out.’ Sym said decisively. Iseult concurred.
