Board Thread:What Would You Do?/@comment-28718853-20181216210457/@comment-36855838-20181218190433

"Heather, how could we forget! He's been freezing while we chatted! Give me the torch, and you go get him a blanket!"

Andrea takes my arm, and begins leading me down the stone staircase while the wall closes behind us.

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Down, down, down we walk, deeper and deeper into the earth.

The stairs are wide, and long, enough so that I could comfortably stretch out and lay down on on any of them with several feet of space to spare.

We slowly near the end of the tunnel, and pass an archway into a massive brick-walled cavern.

Odd mushrooms and mosses luminesce in the center of the space, which is clearly the undead city.

Massive bridges cross the room, never passing over the center, and men and monsters sparsely dot the constructed landscape, smartly dressed as if heading to interviews or parties, and yet completely casual in their mannerisms.

As we descend ever further down the spiral stairway, we near a massive archway, one of a few.

Through it is another stairway, which travels downwards in the counter-clockwise direction, as opposed to clockwise.

The wall between stairways is as thick as the bridges are long, and contains many iron doors, all of which are overhung by signs.

I read them as we descend.

Marge's Apothecary,

Allison's Haberdashery,

Steve's Evening Gowns,

Delilah's Pocket-Watches,

Sampson's,

Licenses, Taxes, and Fees,

Marriages,

Susan's Scarves,

and so on, the signs went.

Shortly after passing Susan's, Heather returns to us, a blanket in tow.

She drapes me in it, clasping it with an odd pin, the makeshift cape does wonders to keep me warm, coated and filled as it is with soft, pink feathers.

Arriving at the next archway, we step off the stairway towards the center, and onto a ledge, it stretches on for about twenty feet, and is crossed by two bridges rather than one.

Having passed several of these ledges before as the chamber slowly thinned, I already know that the circular platform will be lined with doors, presumably homes or shops.

Ten such ledges remain below.

We enter an innocuous door, marked down as 11-53.

Inside is a small home, in the kitchen area sits a stovetop coated in runes which slowly translate themselves to "heat," and the single digit numbers, giving me a minor headache.

The fireplace crackles pleasently, smoke drifting up the chimney to god knows where.

Seated around it are five armchairs, in one a man who smells of the earth sits snoring, a peaceful expression on his face.

Another chair holds an oldish looking woman, some small wrinkles etched into her beautiful face, her hair a pristine white, unlike her sister's off-blonde.

She's awake, her armchair pulled close to another, in which a scrawny man sits, mumbling words of terrors in his sleep, she gently strokes his hair, before moving to sit inhis chair, holding him in her lap.

His mutterings cease, and as she holds him close, his features relax, and he begins to snore.

I seat myself across from these three, and a white-skinned woman, not at all dissimilar to Heather, enters from another room.

Her air is one of grace, and beauty, despite the rather plain clothes she wears, gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt, which are a little tight in the curves.

She seats herself beside the bowtied farmer, and a closer look unearths a profoundly ordinary revelation.

"Are you Heather's mother?"

She gives me a passing glance and a quick nod, before recentering her entire focus on the sleeping farmer, cooing quietly while stroking his hand.

Heather comes in from what is certainly the bedroom, now wearing a nightgown.

She floats gently over to the open chair between her mother and Andrea's sister.

With all the chairs filled, and my blanket now draped over me, Andrea returns from the bedroom as well, now dressed similarly to Heather's mom, but the same clothes are even tighter in the same places.

She looks around the room, upset at having nowhere to sit.

As she heads for a chair in the kitchen, I call out.

"Hey, wanna sit with me?"

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