Kindred Folk - Velvet Wings

[FennWenn]

“Fennik Glenwey. Still here,” a small fae felt himself mouth as he returned to himself. “Fenn.” To his waking, breathing body. To…

What was this?

There was a liquid covering him, a gummy slime of sorts. It tacked his eyes closed. Yet… he could breathe through it. At least he wasn’t frozen. Frozen? Something instinctively insisted yes, frozen. You can do that. Though, his back was numb and entirely without feeling. Fenn shifted onto his side. A sore stiffness tacked his limbs together at the joints, as if he hadn’t moved them for weeks, or months. What… where was he? What had happened? He had fallen asleep and… well. What happened after that? More frighteningly, what had happened before that? What at all? With a groggy squeak, he reached into slime around him. After a certain point, the goo became something else, solidified into tacky, silky threads. He stretched, uncurling his leaden legs. His feet, too, met with more thread. It was almost like a blanket swaddling him all around. A really gooey, wet blanket.

Uncertain, Fenn pressed his palms harder into the threads. They had some give to them, but a few broke under his touch. Beyond the initial layer of gunky buildup, they met his hands with a feeling not unlike like dried-out spiderwebbing.

What was this?

With a grunt of effort, he tore through it, making a gash just big enough for him to stick a hand (and an eye) out of. Oxygen wheezed into the narrow space. Ooze sloshed out. A sneeze jolted him and he felt guck slide of of his nose. Yuck. Stale air slid into his lungs, sharp yet lukewarm, forcing him to hack out more gunk. Wiping the rest of it from his eyes, he peered out.

His vision was blurry. Maybe from the guck, maybe from not using it for a while, maybe just because the world around was murky-dim with dark. Hesitantly, he felt the floor outside with his palm. It met coarse and eroding fabric. This swampy mess of threads enveloping him — cocoon? — was on a rug, on the floor of what seemed to be a quaint stone bedroom. Fenn blinked. He felt as if he should recognize this room. Perhaps not intimately, but still, recognize. He did not recognize this room. He still did not remember how he got into this room. This room, filled with fuzzes of faded sky-blue and cloudy decorations. Dust and cobwebs draped from the canopy bed beside him. A wavering mobile above spun about in a chilly breeze. He knew enough to know that this place wasn't his.

The gaping emptiness, his lacking past, both burned in the cage of his chest.

Something stirred elsewhere in the castle. The wump of heavy paws and click of clawed nails echoed in through the gap in his cocoon, and pricked his ears up to alertness. He wasn’t alone.