Chapter Text
POV — SADNESS
You’re hungry. You don’t know how long you’ve been awake, but it didn’t really matter to you until you felt your body telling you to get up.
Ow, ow, ow. Your arms and legs are bruised all over. There are broken pieces of wood around you, shaded like the sand under your feet. You walk with a limp for about a few seconds before laying back down despite your frustration.
Your body is entirely lightless, along with the shirt and pants you’re wearing. There are darkless dots going along your skin. They’re… comforting. You’re not sure why. Reminds you of the dots directly overhead. Against logic, “the sky” isn’t the right term for where those stars are located.
The dots above you look beautiful. A piece of art that you can’t yet truly understand.
The ones on your skin are imitating them, maybe. Not as beautiful as the ones over your head, but not bad either. Maybe. You don’t want to dwell on it much.
You just called them something, right? The dots. Seems like it just slipped your mind. You just woke up, not the time to be sentimental.
Right. You’re hungry… no, not hungry. You feel like you could go days without food right now. Something close though! Desperation? Your body is convincing you to move regardless.
The sand and trees stretch for miles. You can see, albeit blurry, some sort of structure at the end of the beach. Maybe you can find people there? You’d love to consider your choices, but that pang is getting worse each moment you’re not eating. You can’t focus on much else right now.
Tired. Your feet are sore already. That building isn’t very far anymore. Just a bit more walking. There’s people sitting at the front. Unfortunate.
You were hoping to ransack the place a little.
…that took a while! At least you’re here. There’s a few houses to your right, left of the house. It’s not big by any means, but it’s very sturdy. And a little luxurious. Definitely looked-after.
No one’s at the front, now that you’ve gotten closer. Maybe your vision was just blurry? The door’s closed but unlocked, seeing as there’s no resistance when you push the doorknob. You feel a tiny bit regretful for intruding, but… you’re hungry, so, too bad so sad, you guess. Your fingers curl around the handle and twist it until the door opens.
Walking inside reminds you that you have no idea what you’re looking for. Maybe you should have thought about that first… whatever. You’re, “hungry,” you think. People eat food when they’re hungry (right??? you’re not sure-) so you might aswell go and see if there’s any. Worst case scenario, you stay hungry? You don’t feel like you can die from that anyway. The inside of the room is… bright. You can feel your body warming up (also you were cold this entire time?) just from the thing hanging from the ceiling. Looking at it hurts your eyes.
You can hear the hum-buzz of Craft coming from the room to your right. The room it’s in looks something like a kitchen- do kitchens usually look like this? It’s not how you remember them. The noise is coming from some sort of container. It’s imbued with some sort of craft, but you don’t bother figuring it out. Bigger interests here.
The floor squeaks when you walk on it, but you wouldn’t know that considering you just threw yourself at the container because you smell something. You really are hungry! After a bit of fiddling, it opens up and you start looking through. Your stomach growls at the sight of a pack of meat. Grabby grab grab. The moment your hand touches the food is when you realize the function of this container—it, and everything inside of it, is cold. Maybe thats why you can hear Craft on it. Unfortunately for you, that means the food you just grabbed is cold. Your face resets in a fit of disappointment before your stomach pangs again.
…okay, maybe it’s best if you were to leave first and eat when you’re not robbing someone’s house. You walk out, eventually sitting back down on the low-shaded sand. The stars are bright out, shining down on you while you poke at the paper-ish thing separating you from the food. It’s clearly not ripping with your fingers and your teeth aren’t sharp enough to tear it open– Stars, you are SO desperate. Your hands are buzzing with Craft with every second that goes by.
!
Your Craft ripped it! Is that how you’re supposed to open this blinding thing? Maybe it’s made to break open when coming into contact with Craft? You take a few seconds to channel Craft into your hand before you try to tear it open. Your hand makes an instinctive scissors sign as–
!!!
It’s open!! Finally! You barely let yourself breathe before your teeth dig into-.. salami. Never a big fan (including when it’s so blinding cold) but it’s better than nothing. You feel warmer as your teeth rip it up. That “feeling” in your stomach has died down by the time you finished eating. A bit of salami was enough to sate you? Really?
Who cares? It tasted good. Like…
You… forgot the name. What did it taste like? You can vividly remember how it tasted, but the word keeps escaping you. It’s a basic word. Started with an M. People… people put the same thing on cut potatoes, no? It’s some kind of topping you put onto food. Stars, you tasted this yesterday. At some…
What were you doing yesterday?
Your head is starting to hurt. You can’t hold onto a thought for more than a few seconds. Your memory was never this bad- no- this isn’t your memory. It’s like something is prying your words away from you. Your eyes feel like they’re going to pop out of your socket. Your hands are already up against your forehead, pushing until the pain stops.
You start to feel cold, again. The paper you apparently dropped in your fit got washed away by a tide. You don’t feel like grabbing it again.
It looked nice, at least.
POV — STRANGER
No more footsteps, as far as you can tell.
“It’s– gone. You can come out.” Your voice shrills as you speak before breathing.
“One hundred percent?”
…a mix of anger and guilt washes over you as you hear the fear in their voice. Suppose it’s a valid reaction, but this situation is already bothering you enough. Pitiful is a good word for what you’re feeling. Anger is still up there. It could be both, really. A Sadness did just invade your house. You open the door slowly. Just checking if it’s gone. You’d never say it, but you honestly prefer being attacked like this once a month over going back to living with your parents these days.
Huh. No Sadness here. And… nothing’s different, either. Sadnesses don’t leave without the entire place being trashed. The eerie levels of tidyness are enough to get you contemplating on your life—you’ve worked at crime scenes. Maybe this one was just a weak Paper type? The destruction Papers leave is noticeably less visible than the other two. But this feels… untouched.
“It smells weird… like how Sadnesses smell.” Your brain is too racked to think about the implications of whatever he just said. Maybe it was a thief dressed up as a Sadness? You don’t doubt your sense of smell though.
It smells like ash. The same smell Sadnesses make. It’s pungent in the air, even stronger than the worst Sadnesses you’ve encountered.
It doesn’t make sense! Something, very crabbing clearly(!!!), was in your living room. But they didn’t take anything? Or do anything, at all, for that matter? You didn’t hear anything from the other side of the door. A Sadness just.. walks in and leaves? Sadnesses don’t do that!!
You’re missing something here. When you were this lost at a crime scene, you at least had a coworker or two to brain-dump with.
“Do… should we call mom and dad? C-can they pick us up?” Your train of thought immediately drops.
The thought of someone, anyone knowing you were staying here, makes you feel sick.
“No, Bon. We’re all good.”
So! You learned that some Sadnesses are actually intelligent. It’s been about three weeks since whatever ghost started invading your crabbing house. You are not strong enough, mentally or physically, to handle a Sadness that is very clearly nimble enough to walk into your house with you barely noticing. The only strategy (asterisk, asterisk, asterisk) you have to survive being in a house with no parental supervision and the equivalent of a serial killer is… Dunno. Barricade yourself and pray.
Very unfortunately, it seems that this specific Sadness has taken a liking to your house. You’re pretty sure it’s stealing your food—you’ve always had a large pantry but there’s nothing else to steal. It has a pattern, too! Only at night, once every two-three days, walking around from your living room to your kitchen and then leaving for the night. If only you didn’t know how murderous Sadnesses could be, you’d think it was kind of adorable. Like a stray cat that you’re letting into your house out of pity.
Instead you have no choice because it, for some reason, knows how to OPEN YOUR DOOR. And pick your lock! Stars, as you used to say! What are you going to do?
You can see the Sadness approaching your house from the window. You’ve grown accustomed to it by now. You call for Bonnie to go into the main bedroom (thank Change this place is large!) and you…
Do whatever. You snatch something random from the bookshelf and walk up the stairs, watching the door from the railing. You’ll press your luck for once, praying the Sadness either doesn't look up or doesn’t come in at all. It’s not like you’re in any real danger, you think? There have been close calls where it saw you and Bon, but they never, y’know, acted on it.
Your hopes melt into a mush of disappointment as you hear your doorknob rattling. It pops open after a few moments. The sound is less scary, now that you’ve started watching it over the last few days. Your “stray cat” comparison is pretty dead-on, you think, as the Sadness walks inside and looks around.
One thing you’ve noticed, you can’t really read any malice from this Sadness. You’ve never been good with reading emotions, but. Come on. They look so skittish! If you dropped a pin near them, they’d jump halfway across the room. You’ve read about these kinds of Sadnesses before, only attacking when provoked, sure, but that’s so rare. And you don’t have anything else to think about these days.
“...These days.” You repeat to yourself, your mood souring a little. Your eyes refocus as you hear something from the lower floor.
“Stars-”
It’s staring at you. Oh. Oh no. Oh, it just… spoke? Speaking is only possible for strong Sadnesses. Ones that are both physically and mentally developed.
You’re face-to-face with a fully developed Sadness? A Sadness at a stage that can tear down concrete? Oooohhh you are crabbing screwed!!
“Sorry!! Didn’t know anyone was living here!” It’s- it’s talking to you?
You can barely understand half of the words. Or the other half, with your heart roaring in your ears like that! That's… some dialect of Vaugardian. Oh, who cares, this is a disaster! Bonnie is in the bedroom on the lower floor! You HAVE to keep watching or else they’ll break into Bonnie’s room! You did not think this through at all!!
You forgot to blink. Ow ow ow. Your eyes re-re-focus and notice that it’s holding something. The Inverted Snowglobe on the bottom of your shelf. Is that what it’s been looking at?
Your train of thought is cut off as they drop the snowglobe and make a break for the door, in the direction of the bedroom Bonnie’s in there Bonnie’s in there you need to blinding MOVE. You run towards the stairs, nearly tripping.
The Sadness is gone by the time you lunge from the stairs. The front door closes with a small thud.
“‘Nille?” You can’t think straight. Your arms move to unlock the door.
“You okay?” Your voice overlaps the sound of the same question from Bonnie, bouncing around in your skull. You hug them before your mind catches up. Change, you feel petrified.
A shaky breath escapes you. You’re both okay. You’re both okay. Thank Change.
You might really have to go back with your parents for today.