The Many Ramblings of K. A. Webb

Written for a Crowdfunding Creative Jam prompt: A surprise trap door.

At first all Lance could do was sit where he’d landed. There’d been no warning before he fell through what he guessed was a hole and he was certain that it hadn’t been there when he’d walked to work. No one had told him about it either, which seemed a little strange because it was the main route from their settlement to the market place. Slowly he looked up at where he expected the hole to be, but there was nothing there. Well, there was something there, but it wasn’t a hole. It was a… ceiling? He shook his head. Ceiling was the wrong word. Looking around gave him the idea he was in a relatively dark cave, although there was light coming from somewhere near, and there didn’t seem to be any way back to where he’d been before.

Breathing deeply, because it seemed the logical thing to do, Lance tried to calm himself down. Everyone had heard stories about people who’d accidentally found a door and ended up on a different world. All he had to do was find his way back home. He pushed the reminders of the other stories, the ones where someone disappeared and never came back, as far away as they would go. That wasn’t going to happen to him. Unsure whether he could stand he put his hands on what felt like a cold rock floor and tried to push himself up. It hadn’t felt like he’d fallen that far, or onto rock, so he didn’t think he’d hurt himself. If anything was going to stop him standing it was going to be shock.

Once Lance was upright, and glad the cave was as big as it looked from his position on the floor, he made a start on walking in the general direction of the light. It gave him hope that there might be other people somewhere within the caves, because he needed to, at the very least, find out where he was. He couldn’t think of any worlds he knew with a cave system, but he didn’t know all that much about the Web. For the first time he realised he should have asked his demon cousin more questions about the travelling she did, because it would have come in handy, even though he’d never planned on leaving his home world. That was the problem with living on a magical world: occasionally it decided what was best for you.

Lance tried to remember some of what he’d overheard her talking about, because both his brother and sister were interested in all the worlds she visited. It was harder than he needed it to be, but it was his own fault, so he kept walking as he tried to work out where in the Web he might be. By the time he walked into a… he stared at the creature, almost unable to believe his own eyes, even though it did make sense for a rabbit to be underground. That was when he realised he’d left the rock behind a while ago.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.