Chapter Text
He’s cold and it’s dark. He breathes in, some sort of syrupy liquid goes down his throat and coats his tongue. It doesn’t really taste like anything, but he feels weak every time he inhales it. He hears something, his ears twitching towards that noise, but he cannot make out what it is–no matter how much he strains his hearing.
All of his senses are muted. Except for one. Touch. His stomach feels uncomfortable. He’s cold. His fur feels sticky and wet and slick all at once. When he flexes his paws, they feel like they’re touching that syrupy liquid. He’s cold. So cold. It’s cold. He hears something else, it echoes. A high-pitched sound. A whine. He flinches from that sound, pinning his ears back. But, without being able to open his eyes, he cannot see what made it.
Time isn’t something he knows here. He just knows floating in that nasty liquid. Breathing it in. Occasionally moving around. He knows pain from when he feels like his body is attacking itself. From when the liquid is suddenly on fire. From when he feels like something is rewriting him. He doesn’t know if the fire is inside him or outside. Sometimes it feels like his veins are burning. Other times it feels like his bones are softening, reshaping, as though someone is sculpting him like clay while he can only twitch uselessly. He tries to thrash, but the liquid presses in from all sides, smothering. He tries to open his mouth to scream, but all that comes is a bubbling rush of that syrup down his throat. He coughs, but nothing helps. His chest aches, his ribs constrict, and then—just as sudden—the burning stops. Leaving only that awful cold.
Cold. Pain. The endless floating. His body doesn’t feel like his body anymore.