I groaned — a headache attacked me even with the slightest movement of my head. My whole skull pulsed like a drum, and for a second I wasn't sure if I was alive or in some weird dream where everything felt too real. I tried to take a breath and feel the surface under me — one half of me at least. The other half was draped across something... or rather, someone. My fingers shifted. That wasn't dirt. That was a body.
Then my brain short-circuited and immediately launched into panic mode.
Letting out a dry huff while struggling to sit upright, I blinked the blurriness out of my eyes and stared at the still-but-breathing form of my friend.
"Aihan, wake up god damn it. We need to figure this mess out."
I gave him a little shove. Nothing. Another shove. Still out like a light.
"Aihan, seriously," I muttered under my breath, more irritated now than panicked. "If you died and left me here alone, I swear to every star in the sky—"
At last, after some thoroughly disrespectful poking, he groaned. His eyelids fluttered, his eyes flicking open slowly, as if waking from the worst nap imaginable.
He blinked. Once. Twice. Cleared his vision. Took in the sky. The trees. Then me.
"Fintan, where the hell are we? And why are you staring at me like that?"
My eyes, which had been tracing over his face — scanning for blood, bruising, anything — finally settled. I exhaled and sat fully upright, legs folding into a cross-legged position.
"Nothing. Just checking if you had a concussion. You're fine. Or you look fine. We're alive, but I'm pretty sure we're lost. The hell are we supposed to do now?"
Aihan sat across from me, copying my posture, but the expression on his face screamed panic. He turned his head, scanning the sheer rock walls enclosing us, his brows drawing together.
"I don't know. I feel like I'm going to scream any second. I'm this close to completely losing whatever's left of my sanity. Oh my god, what if we never get out? What if we end up dying in this stupid place and no one ever finds us? People will think we fled the damn country. Just because we wanted a weekend away and followed a weird-ass glowing clock that led us into this wretched, horrible—"
"Aihan."
"—pit of despair and I swear I can already feel bugs crawling up my back and—"
"Aihan!"
I reached out and grabbed his shoulders, grounding him, keeping him from spiraling deeper.
"Listen to me. Breathe. You need to breathe. Focus on nothing but my voice, okay? Just my voice. In and out."
He nodded quickly, like his head was on a spring. His whole body trembled. I inhaled deeply — slow, audible — and exhaled with the same slow rhythm. I kept pressure on his shoulders, steady, repetitive.
He matched my breathing. Not perfectly at first, but close enough. His trembles slowed. His eyes didn't look quite so wild. After what felt like forever but was probably twenty minutes, the silence around us settled like a fog.
I broke it first.
"Okay. Look. Panicking won't help us. We can think — I'm all for thinking — but we're not going to drown in our thoughts, yeah?"
Aihan exhaled through his nose, then opened his eyes and met mine.
"Got it. God, thank you for not being as much of a wreck as me right now. If I was alone down here…"
"Let's not think about that," I said, lips twitching into something like a smile. "We need to figure a way out. Let's try to find something — materials, maybe a rope. Would be lovely if our phones weren't lying at the top of that cliff. Not like the signal was worth a damn anyway."
Aihan nodded, face a little more composed now. "Understood. I'll take one end of this area, and you can check the other?"
I patted his shoulder. "Yeah. Good plan."
We parted, each walking in opposite directions. The ground here was uneven, covered in a carpet of moss, rock, and leaf litter. I passed crooked tree roots snaking out of the cliff walls, and small sprigs of green pushing through cracks in the rock. Everything smelled earthy — damp, almost metallic.
As I walked, my thoughts spun.
That cliff was high. Way too high. Over 100 feet, maybe closer to 200. There's no way we should've survived. No broken bones. No blood. No real injuries besides a splitting headache. I should be in a neck brace. Aihan should've been knocked out cold or worse. But we were here. Breathing. Awake.
Was it the clock?
That glowing, pulsing thing we'd touched just before falling — had it done something? Had it slowed time? Bent gravity? That sounded ridiculous, even in my own head, but nothing else made sense.
When we both finished scavenging, we regrouped at the place we'd fallen, dropping everything into a pile.
Strips of bark, brittle milkweed stalks, some cattails, three plastic bottles, pieces of torn old fabric, some grass bundles, and a few flat stones that were probably useless but felt important in the moment.
We stared at it.
Still not enough to make anything remotely climbable.
Aihan groaned and flopped down, resting his chin in his palm like a kid in detention."Fintan, I think we may as well say our last words and learn to live like cavemen. We'll make fire with rocks. Eat ants. Go feral."
I snorted. "You wouldn't last a day, Mr. 20-step-skincare-routine."
He rolled his eyes. "Please. If my ancestors could survive eating raw roots and bathing in streams, then so can I."
"Sure. Right up until you break a nail and cry about it."
"That was one time and it was a deep crack, okay?"
I stood up, brushing moss off my pants. "Whatever you say. I'm gonna explore a bit more. Maybe there's something we missed."
He waved a hand. "Cool. I'll go pretend to forage for berries."
As I walked off, I listened to the soft rustle of Aihan moving behind me. I pushed through some low shrubs, brushing leaves aside, when I felt something.
Round. Smooth. A little too smooth. Warm to the touch.
I froze.
I wrapped my fingers around it and slowly pulled it from the bushes. And there it was — that damned clock.
Its surface glowed faintly, like embers that hadn't quite died out. My hand instinctively raised, ready to slam it into the rocks and be done with it, but something held me back. Some deep, sharp pull in my chest.
I held it up closer. Roman numerals. Circular, steering wheel-like shape — oddly similar to the Hyundai Santa Fe, which made no sense but felt correct in a weird way. The glow hadn't vanished. It pulsed, faint but steady, as if the clock had a heartbeat.
Maybe... just maybe... this thing had kept us alive.
I turned and walked toward Aihan.
"Hey," I called, holding the clock up, "I found it. The clock from earlier."
He turned, spotted it, and immediately grimaced. "That vile spawn of Satan. That cursed object. Burn it. Smash it. Launch it into the abyss."
"I get it," I said. "But I think it might be the reason we're not dead."
He stopped walking and frowned. "How do you figure?"
"Look at the cliff," I said, nodding toward the towering wall above. "Really look. We should be dead. There's no reason we aren't — unless something interfered."
Aihan's eyes lifted, trailing the vertical face of rock. He stayed quiet, squinting, analyzing. Then his brow furrowed.
"You're not wrong," he muttered. "And we didn't exactly fall in superhero landing positions either. But that thing—" he pointed dramatically, "—that thing is the reason we fell!"
I stared down at the clock. My reflection glimmered faintly in its face, distorted by that eerie glow.
"I know," I said slowly. "But what if it didn't mean for us to die?"
I looked up, eyes locking with his.
"What if this clock never meant to kill us… it just wants us trapped?"
Aihan blinked. His jaw clenched. And for the first time since we landed down here, he had no snarky comeback.
Just silence.
Heavy, unsettling silence.
✦✦✦
Bluebells sway with the wind, gentle as ever.
Time goes by as flowers wither.
Lilies droop, awaiting the turn of a new season.
A breath and two from there.
Lotuses float as the wind pushes a soft wave.
Something sets in motion.