It took a second, but she eventually managed to lift herself up into a sitting position. Blinking away the sleep in her eyes, she found herself surrounded by shadow and darkness. Beneath her hands was solid stone, but that was about all she could work out at the moment.
She knew that all of this should be alarming. She knew that waking up in a strange place was never good, but that was about all she knew for sure. Well, that and her own name, of course.
Squinting into the void, she tried to recall something, anything. The best she could come up with was a vague memory of a lot of light and an inkling of being dead. But if she was dead, then how could she be here? Wherever here was.
As her eyes adjusted, Ariana looked down at her hands. She clearly had a body, and why would you need a body if you were dead? Also, she was hungry. Surely you shouldn't need to eat if you are dead.
Deciding that just sitting there, contemplating her own existence, was not doing her any good, Ariana cautiously got to her feet.
She was pretty sure that she was in a cave of some sort, due to all the stone and the echoes she heard floating around. Getting to her feet was the easy part; walking proved to be the challenge. Not because she was hurt, but simply because she could hardly see her hand before her nose. She was rather worried about falling off a cliff or some such in the dark.
Luckily, she only had to walk about four steps before her outstretched hand landed on the cool surface of the cave wall. She still walked very carefully; even with a wall to follow, it didn't mean there wasn't still a drop-off she could tumble into. Then she really would be dead.
Things started to look up when her eyes picked out a faint light up ahead. The entrance to the cave, perhaps? If she could just get out of here, maybe she could figure out where she was, and how to reach civilization too.
That thought actually had her stopping in her tracks. Civilization? She knew the meaning of the word and what finding it would mean... But for the life of her, Ariana could not remember a single personal memory of it. She couldn't remember a single, specific person's face or name. Forget other people; she couldn't even recall what she, herself, looked like.
This wasn't good.
Still frozen a few feet from what may well be freedom, Ariana reached up with a shaky hand and traced out her own face, trying to jog some memory of looking in a mirror. She felt the expected eyes, nose, and mouth. The shape felt like what a face should be, but she did not remember any of it. Not the shape of her nose nor the distance between her eyes. What color were these eyes? Or her hair?!
Well, the hair was long; she could feel that, at least. Nearly down to her hips. But she couldn't remember the color whatsoever.
Biting a lip worriedly, she decided that she needed to get out of the cave first. Once she was free, she could, then, try and figure the rest out.
With that decided, Ariana continued her staggered trek to the exit. She was still cautious of each step but now moved with a little more vigor, eager to get out and breathe some fresh air. However, when she reached the curve, where she detected the light, it was not a cave mouth, nor a steep drop-off, that she came face-to-face with.
Instead, Ariana stood frozen, a mere fifteen feet from what appeared to be an extremely underfed and possibly rabid dog. Its fur was grey and molted, and its eyes were a bright yellow. Most concerning was the lack of fear with the animal. Some vague recollection told her that it was a sign of rabies if the infected animal showed no fear of humans. Though, Arianna was a little relieved to not see any foam around its thin muzzle.
Though, rabid or not, it was a very bad thing to be face-to-face with a clearly starving, wild animal. Her limbs began to shake, and she eyed the beast warily. She had just lifted a bare foot to retreat back into the cave, maybe to lure the wolf in so that she could run around it, when a completely unexpected noise had her gasping, startling her yet again.
The sound of a raven's cackle reverberated off the stone walls, and Arianna just barely prevented herself from sliding to the floor in fright. She had been so on edge by the presence of the wolf that she had completely missed the huge bird seated on its back.
Not that she blamed herself; after all, why the heck would a wolf let a bird just ride on its back like that? It didn't seem natural. Although waking up in a cave, disoriented and without a memory, didn't seem natural either.
"At least she isn't dead..." the wolf said, eying the woman. Her long dark hair was even more disheveled after the last few days fighting off the fever in his cave.
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The raven clacked his beak, causing the girl to flinch and take a half step back, eyeing them warily.
The wolf sighed, lowered his head as submissively as he could—something he never would have done before the Dome—and tried to sidle nearer the girl. He wouldn't be able to help her very much if she was just afraid of him all the time.
The wolf wriggled just enough to unbalance the raven and not alert the girl too much. The raven stumbled, but it had the desired effect of smoothing out the bird's feathers again.
Don't play the fool. It's not suitable for you. > Growled the wolf, glad the girl was not privy to their telepathic conversation and, therefore, couldn't hear his non-audible growl.
He took the opportunity to take another small step toward the woman. But she also stepped back. Disappointed, he decided he would just have to throw his pride to the wind and go full 'innocent pet mode' and forced his tail to wag slightly. Was it a little degrading? Yes. Would the raven hold it against him till they finally passed into the void? Definitely.
But it had the effect that the wolf had hoped for, and the girl paused, eyeing him now with almost as much curiosity as she did fear.
"Ummm..." she said, still nervous. The wolf wasn't acting aggressive at all. And its tail was wagging... Was it a pet? Were both animals someone's strange pets? It would explain why they both seemed so comfortable around one another, she supposed. "N-nice wolf."
The raven snorted, ruffling his wings in amusement.
The bird didn't answer; he just ruffled his wings one last time to spite the wolf before growing still. The wolf took another step forward and was pleased to see that she did not retreat again.
Arianna couldn't help it. She just really wanted to pet the wolf. Not that she could say why she had such a massive urge; maybe it had something to do with the life she could no longer remember. She did have a sense that she liked animals.
Nervously, Arianna reached out a hand—one that she could see was pale, now that she was in a faint light—and bent forward. She was still afraid, but she inched forward all the same. She watched the wolf like a hawk as she slipped her fingers between its ears. Gosh, it was in such bad shape! All skin and bones, and Arianna could see that its fur was thin and patchy, and every rib was visible. Heck, she could count every one of its vertebrae.
The wolf made no further advance and just allowed Arianna to continue running her fingers through his fur. Nervously, she reached out to see if the raven would allow her to do the same.
Apparently not. The deadly sharp beak clacked at her fingers the second she made to reach for it, causing her to gasp and draw both hands back fearfully. Arianna took a step back and eyed the bird warily. Really, if she got bit, it would have been her own fault. Normally a person wouldn't just pet wild animals.
The bird replied indignantly, his feathers fluffing up once again. If he kept doing that, what few he had left would fall out. Then how would he fly? Though the thought of this miserable bird being bald was rather amusing to the wolf, so he decided not to comment further.
Instead, he took a few cautious steps toward the woman and bumped her with his head. He was not a fan of humans, even less so of those from that accused other world that the Witch liked to haul them from... But this one just felt different. It had been a really long time since he had last laid eyes on one, but he remembered them all being pompous and self-righteous, spouting off the wicked goddess's rhetoric, and thinking themselves the 'chosen ones.' This girl just looked lost and confused.
All the beings who still managed to cling to life in this miserable Dome could relate to that sentiment.
Still not really comfortable with a wolf so close, even one that she outweighed at the moment, Arianna cautiously stepped around the animal with the bird still perched on his back. She just, really, wanted out of this cave and to see the sun. To breathe fresh air.
However, if it was the sun and a cool breeze that Arianna hoped to find outside the cave, then she was out of luck. She stumbled out to a sky covered in oily, brownish clouds and a land in a state of decay.
The ground was hard-packed, and not a blade of grass was to be seen between dead and nearly leafless trees, their trunks sickly looking and covered in bearded moss. Behind her rose a small hillock, also devoid of grass, with the mouth of the cave bored into it. There was a slight breeze blowing, but it was cold and wet and heavy with that damp swamp smell that had greeted her when she had woken up.
A brush against her legs had her jumping slightly. She looked down and saw that the wolf had followed her and had taken up position at her side. The raven clacked its beak again before launching into the air. Arianna watched as it rose forty or so feet up, just above the bare branches of the trees, and circled.
"What is this place?" Arianna asked, feeling strangely abandoned. Rejected. And, mostly, alone.
As an unexplained hurt clenched in her chest, Arianna wrapped her arms around her torso and started to shake, a lone tear falling down her cheek despite her best efforts not to cry.
Don't cry. It only gets worse if you cry.
She gasped and crouched low to the ground. She had no idea where that thought had come from, but it had the ring of something she had told herself quite often. For the first time, in the small amount of time since waking up in this place, she felt as if she may not want to remember her old life. How bad could it have been if the thought of this place seemed better than what she had lost?