To Higher Ground

Franky lumbered through the forest, confused as to why it was so quiet. This forest had been his home for a while. It was big, and sometimes it was dark, just the way he liked it. And there were so many animals that he had made friends with. Some of them were very very big, and others were very very small. Every now and again he saw a human-person with legs that were not human at all, and sometimes he didn't see him.

The Cave Creeper skulked around, sniffing around to smell something to hint to the meaning behind the crippling silence that had grasped his new home.

Sniff sniff. Sniff sniff.

He felt rather than heard the low thunderous sound of many moving feet, and went to find it. Thunderous feet was better than nothing at all, even if it was one of the few things around this place that was bigger and scarier than him.

When the many-legged creature found the stampede of Lonlies, he tilted his head, padding along behind them.

Franky was decently well known in the area. Despite his size, he'd never eaten a living thing, preferring to munch on rocks and dirt. Its stride was much longer than that of the Lonlies, so it purposely moved slowly, so as to not overtake them.

Ever since the report of the tsunami was aired, the high levels of panic anywhere near civilization, or just anybody for that matter, hurt Dreizel's head. Initially, he had tried the best he could at fixing that. He tried calming people down, helped them move to safer locations, but there was only so much he could do. Even though others tried to remain calm, Dreizel could still feel their lingering fear.

And so, as time grew short and anxieties high, Dreizel left the vicinity of safety and decided to fly into the woods. Thankfully, the place had been quiet of all those chaotic emotions... and apparently, of everything else. No birds, no critters. Even the insects seem to have disappeared. Not surprising, given the fact that there's a big wave coming in.

The big wave--the tsunami, was actually quite new to Dreizel. He'd heard of them from where he came from, but he never really saw much of them. Or any at all. So the curiosity about what a tsunami looked like was the other reason why he decided to get away from safety. Sure, the woods didn't sport the best view--

Dreizel froze. His eyebrows joined as he concentrated on the thumping sound. At first, it was so quiet, he almost missed the first uneven beats of the sound. Then it quickly rose in both volume and frequency. Thumping became more than a few beats within seconds and soon, there were visual representations of the sounds too.

Familiar critters that Dreizel have seen before as he used the woods as his place of silence seemed to become a flood themselves as they rushed passed him. Always, he had seen one or two only of these shy-looking rodents so the sight of hundreds of them ignoring him and simply passing by him in their own tiny versions of furious panic was a strange sight indeed.

For a couple of beats, he stood there, clueless about how to feel seeing so many capped rodents rushing past him, about what to do next and how to go about moving lest he injure the heart-tailed ones in the process of following the uphill direction in which they scampered to. The one thing that made him truly move, however, was the sight of the large, multi-legged beast that broke through the shrubbery.

Dreizel had let out a scream before he too moved with the swarm of Lonelies, following the quick creatures uphill. He had only belatedly realized that the freaky-looking creature was not there to harm him when it too padded by him.

Franky was curious of the Lonelies. They were small and had strange habits that the Crave Crawler didn't understand. But they were nice enough, at least to him, and he had no reason to fear them. They couldn't really do him any harm, so he found no reason to bring his layers of sharp teeth upon them.

Some of the ones in the back scampered up to him, making their little noises to make him go faster. He acquiesced, breaking into a slight run. Fast enough to trail closer behind the Lonelies, but not fast enough to overtake them. As a subterranean creature, he didn't feel any kind of warning for any natural disasters save earthquakes. The earth Franky was intimately familiar with.

The sea and sky? Not so much.

As he ran, picking up the Lonelies that got tired with his tendrils and putting them on his back, he saw Dreizel. Dreizel was a humanoid, like the other people that lived on this island. And like all the other people on this island, he screamed and tried to run from Franky when they saw him. But Franky was used to that. Maybe it was some kind of greeting. Humans are weird when they do things.

Weird little humans.

But since this particular little human was running along with them, Franky didn't mind him. As they got a little closer, he lowered his big head, almost to offer Dreizel a ride on his back where a few other Lonelies were resting.

Dreizel slowed down to be in pace with the swarm, now that it seemed the big one wasn't going to harm him. He noticed that some Lonelies seemed to get tired quickly. He watched them slow down, take deep and tiny little breaths, then move on. He wanted to help them, scoop them up and carry them until they were okay, but he doubted just suddenly doing so would frighten them so he didn't. He watched the others that had fallen behind took the chance to rest upon the huge, many-legged creature which did not seem to mind them as it moved with them--almost curiously so, too.

A few seconds later, he felt little legs clutch at his legs and ankles harmlessly. He looked down to see that a few of them had also started using him as a moving rest stop. He didn't mind. He looked at them more closely. He had always seen these little critters from afar and really had no chance to get close to one. It turns out they were a lot more adorable up close, and it turns out, they had pale bits of color on their fur, too.

"Wow," he mumbled, mostly to himself. He was right in the middle of staring curiously at the little furry things that attached themselves to his legs when he felt the air next to him shift and a two-mouthed head appeared.

"Whoa!" Dreizel jumped again, faltering in his steps as he tried to calm his racing heart. Still wary of the large creature, Dreizel stared. It looked like it didn't mean harm and was offering him a ride with the way its head was positioned. The fallen angel raised his hand carefully and gently touched the creature's neck. "You want me to ride?" he asked, making sure, even if he himself wasn't sure if it could understand him.