Chapter Text
Calliope doesn’t immediately open her eyes when consciousness comes to her. Her lids feel glued shut—like she wouldn’t be able to muster the energy to open them if she tried.
Her body is rocked as an abrupt, heaving inhale forces its way into her lungs. She gasps, desperately trying to take in more oxygen, as if she's been holding her breath for an indeterminate amount of time. Suddenly realising she’s standing up, her stomach rolls, but surprisingly she manages to keep her balance despite the sudden wave of dizziness.
She stands stock-still, counting her breaths and the rapid beating of her heart. Testing the ground, she clenches her toes and feels wet soil squelching underneath tender, dew-damp blades of grass.
She finally opens her eyes. There’s not a hint of light, and no sounds to be heard but the faint whistle of the breeze against leaves, and chirping crickets.
Goosebumps prickle every inch of her chilled skin. She's blind and naked in an unfamiliar forest. Nothing around her smells familiar. There’s just the scent of foreign trees, foreign dirt on the air, night winds over a cold body of water, and blood—lots of blood.
The failed attempt to orient herself stops her entire circuit of thought dead in its tracks, returning her to the strictly physical. She traces every jolt of pain in her raw, bruised body. There’s an incredibly deep ache that lies just under every inch of her skin down to her bones.
Her thoughts skitter dangerously around the slick substance splashed over her front. It's still dripping down her stomach. She feels a creeping drip from her knees down her calves, stopping to pool at her ankles and between her toes.
Distantly, she registers similar material caked in the webs between her fingers and toes, and welled up at the notch of her collarbone. It's not just blood, she can feel wet, heavy strands and… hair? Fur? Both.
She tries to take deep breaths, focusing on the consistency of the mud and the crisp bite of the smell of the trees around her. They don’t smell anything like home. Everything is a little denser–earthy with a particular spice to it.
Calliope can’t bring herself to take a step. She feels sluggish, bloated almost as if she just ate a huge meal. Then, she’s aware of a taste. It’s metallic and heavy—sour on her tongue. Once she recognises it, it feels caught in her throat, but there's nothing in her mouth. Her stomach roils again and the urge to succumb to unconsciousness returns.
As Calliope feels her body start to shut down, she stumbles back a step, swaying, exhaustion overtaking her. Her heel backs against something solid. It gives against her movement with a nauseating slopping noise. The sodden edges of a heaping mass at her feet tickle her ankle, wet, stringy, and spongy.
Wet with…
She swallows thickly. A chill even deeper than before hits her and she seizes in fear. Breaths start to come faster, shallower. She’s starting to panic. Her throat is tight with the threat of crying or wailing into the brisk night and falling to her knees.
All of Calliope’s remaining strength leaves her body in a breath, and she stoops a little, sagging. She’s close to pitching forward toward the ground and barely stops herself from a boneless collapse into the gory husk at her feet.
The husk of herself she left behind.
A cry escapes her throat as she remembers what she is now. What she’s become. Everything else is a blur. She can't remember coming here, wherever here is. She doesn’t remember… the change.
She doesn’t know what she did last with any certainty. Where was she? Back at home? She tries to picture her room or her bed, but she can’t bring anything to mind. Disjointed images swim in her head. She can’t even conjure what the front door of her house looks like.
Tears start to run hot down Calliope’s cheeks and she chokes on her breaths. There’s no where to go from here. She’s ready to lie down on the ground and wait for whatever end comes.
But then, she feels something calling her through the turmoil of her thoughts. A tug in her heart and a distant scent of familiarity.
Something awakens that has been long silent to her. She can almost hear a voice from her past urging her to keep going, a bright light in a shroud of darkness. A light she can never forget no matter how hard she tries.
Calliope lets herself be guided without thinking. She gives in to the comforting pull instinctually. It’s an awkward position to move in, hunched over and seemingly sore in every imaginable muscle, but Calliope's thoughts are numb and half asleep.
She keeps taking deep breaths through her nose, her tears now drying on her cheeks. The numbness in her mind and body starts to fade as she stumbles through the darkness, led only by the faint wisps of home calling to her through the pitch-black night.
Calliope walks and walks. She doesn’t know how long or far, but eventually, the dawn is breaking just over the horizon. Only a soft glow at the edge of the world, still not enough to see by.
At some point her feet find knotted planks of wood and she climbs steps. Calliope doesn’t feel present. She’s watching from somewhere deep inside herself as she finds herself standing in front of an unfamiliar door.
There’s nothing after that. She can’t speak, she can’t cry, and she doesn’t have the strength to knock on the door, but still, it opens for her. Somehow she’s known all along who stands on the other side. There’s no surprise for where she finds herself. Somehow she meant to end up here all along.
Nothing races through her mind anymore. She feels like she’s floating on the surface of the ocean with her eyes closed as she steps into Juliette’s home, insubstantial as a ghost.
All Calliope can sense is a gentle touch, the soothing voice of her former lover, like the faint flicker of warmth from a candle on a freezing night.
Everything else fades away as the door shuts behind them, closing off the creeping tendrils of sunlight beginning to branch out from the shadows past the threshold.