Chapter 1 (A)

You're in a dark room, it's too dark to see anything, but you feel your position in this space. You're sitting on the wooden floorboards, a beam (of what seems like sunlight) shines through the blinded window in the wall. Inside of the frame you see a bright blue sky with pink clouds moving past your view.

The beam has scrolling scanlines, and clouds cast shadow to the angular rectangle shape it creates. You try to reach out to feel the illuminated floorboards beneath, but the closer your hand reached the surface, the more numb it felt. Touching the floor felt like nothing, it felt like sensible static.

You pull your hand back, regaining feeling in it naturally, and start to stand up. A headrush starts but you slowly stabilize and are now able to examine the window before you. So you walk up to the beam, your whole body goes numb, but you keep moving until you reach it. Standing before the frame into the beautiful sky covered by blinds, you slouch over resting your body against it, you feel yourself heavy against the window sill but not the texture, despite it clearly being wood-crafted.

Looking outside up above you see no sun, the sky is bright but there's a looming feeling that you can't shake with its absense, it feels like it's late, like maybe you're supposed to be in bed by now? It's a confusing feeling, perhaps one quick nap against the window sill in this state would be nice.

You close your eyes and yawn, letting your heavy head rest against the right wall of the frame. Then a breeze flows through the window, and you notice a 'heavyness' to your left shoulder that you couldn't sense on your own. 'Something' touched you.

You jump into a frantic fit ; was it a spider?! Did someone tap you on the shoulder?? But- There's nothing there! It's.. just you alone in the room. And you walk away from the window, shaking... Looking around while walking away. You notice pale grass growing through the floorboards. This was just behind where you were sitting. Looking to the wall you were facing against this whole time, you're met with a view through an open side of the room, pale folliage grows from it.

And outside is a grove where it originates.

And outside is a tree in the far distance.

And so you walk forward, curious. Meeting the brightness of outside the room. This is unique compared to what you previously saw of the world through the window. As you step onto the grass below, you are able to feel it swaying in the wind, brushing against your planted feet, an actual sensation in the light.

It feels nice being able to see and feel, it seems safe now. There's perhaps a chance that whatever bothered you could have come from here, but you don't see anything suspicious, so you relax. Close your eyes, and it happens again- Oh, no, thankfully that was just the breeze. Nothing to worry about..

Your voice echoes softly throughout the grove.

Not long after you can hear some nearby grass begin to rustle in response, sounds like.. walking. Someone's here! Someone heard you! A figure from out of view enters yours, they were climbing uphill.

It's sudden but they don't seem to be mad, so while you tense up, you still reply

It's practically a conversation now.

You get up from the couch and walk to the kitchen, each step is kinda wobbly, and the room is dark so you can't see where you're going very well, but you make it there shortly. Standing beneath a lone kitchen light left on for at least a while since your parents left. You sit down at the table next to the fridge for a minute.

The sounds of people driving by in their cars outside reach inside the house through the open windows near you, they're playing loud music, joys of city life.

You get up from your seat and open the fridge to grab something to eat: You grab some ingredients to make a simple sandwich and the jug of cranberry juice. You get yourself a mug too from the dish rack, pouring cranberry juice into it, it's your favourite. And set the sandwich thingies onto the marble counter.

You make a basic sandwich with two slices of meat and one slice of cheese, no mayonnaise to it, father would usually be the one to do that for you. Usually they cut it for you too with a knife, but you're not allowed to use knives (yet), so you have to eat it as a whole.

It doesn't taste as good as you'd like, but it's something... You sit back down, taking a few bites of your food and sips of your drink.

You're not as hungry now! But your mouth is quite dry. Not really thinking too much about it, you go and lie down on the couch like before, and hear a car pull into the driveway outside.

Father was first to the door, he unlocks it and comes inside, soon after mom follows, but father looks toward the kitchen instead of you, and his expression changes, frustrated.

He walks to the kitchen and raises his voice from inside of it, telling you that you left the bread out on the table (opened) and that you didn't clean up your mess, there's crumbs where you ate cause you didn't grab a plate.

He goes to where you're laying and tries to 'wake you up' because he thinks you're sleeping. And tells you what he just said, and that the mess has to be cleaned up.

You apologize and get up to take care of it like he asked. Picking up crumbs and putting things you took out back away, then you're allowed to lay down again, but now the TV's on. It's a bit too loud to be able to sleep with it on in the same room, so you go to your room instead, to lay down in your bed.

Father tells you "love you son, sorry I got upset".

And you tell him it's fine, from across the house. In the room you sleep in you can see _____'s still in her bed, asleep,

You're shaking...

You and them walk around the grove through the grass, it's somewhat of an infinite plane, but there's a shoreline in the direction you're headed.