Day 2 Evening

[Ada Wong]

It was a nice day out. A steady thrum of insects buzzed in the air, sweet-smelling wildflowers nestled close in the scarce patches of sunlight. Great towering hulks of trees, riddled all over with dark grooves and climbing vines, fanned their branches out and prevented the heat of the day from sweltering across the inner atmosphere of the jungle. That Warlock guy, you really had to hand it to him— he sure knew how to spruce up a prison.

A tiny mudbug puttered about in the damp of the forest floor, decaying vegetative matter serving as the perfect place for it to shape a snug little home from the loamy, enriched dirt. It dug headfirst into the soil, hairy little legs wriggling about as several crinkly leaves were overturned by an unforeseen, transiently light breeze.

Many others just like it did the very same, burrowing in between mushrooms, veiny tree roots, and even the half-eaten carcass of a dead bird. The bird's feathers, soft like flower petals and just as pliant, were swept across the scattered undergrowth and mud in pint-sized tufts of fuzzy yellow.

High above the ground and nestled into the sturdy curve of a branch that would present a gut-wrenchingly sickening drop if he were to fall, Crowley snoozed as the shallow noonday light intermittently broke through the forest canopy. A few bright yellow feathers were stuck to the underside of his chin in a false goatee. With each soft snore they tickled at his throat, prompting the jumble of limbs and perilously balanced sunglasses to sigh and twist into increasingly gymnastic positions athwart the tree limb.

What sounded like a fog horn intermingled with a curious combination of wub-dizzling pealed out with an outstanding shriek, shattering the demon’s peaceful afternoon nap. With a yelp and a sleep-mangled shout, Crowley tumbled from his perch and fell roughly three stories towards the forest floor.

Blargh. Crowley thought viciously as he fell, narrowing his bleary eyes at the firearm still snugly tucked at his elbow.

His body braced to hit the ground; Crowley wasn’t expecting to land with anything short of a good splatter. In fact, he figured that his head would likely crack like an egg in the next handful of skipping seconds, sunny-side up. It was about time that he met with some horrible fate.

It occurred to him that he had been falling for quite a while— more than enough time for his centuries-long life to flash before his eyes, which had yet to happen. No, rather than be subjected to the agonizing phantom pain of falling in a comet trail of threadbare feathers and singed grace, a rather unexpected memory came to mind with startling clarity.

An afternoon in the park. Frost-chilled weather, his breath fogging in the air. Good company, too— a bookish fellow with well-groomed hands and a figurative, partially literal halo of uprightness weaving about his head. Crowley was wont to point it out, but resisted the temptation.

They had been standing around in comfortable silence when a little duck waddled over towards them, nosing with its rounded bill towards the ground. The pond had frosted over with little spider webs of ice, it was no wonder at all to them that it might be hungry. Poor sucker.

“Watch this,” Crowley said with a wicked grin. Aziraphale let out a long-suffering sigh, the very amount of telling off he would reserve for later easily visible in the chilly weather, but observed nonetheless as the demon cinched his fingers together. The demon clicked his tongue coaxingly at the duck, waggling his fingers around until the fowl’s glittering eyes focused on him.

Cute little wagging tail feathers followed after it as it wobbled on webbed feet towards him, its beady eyes small and dark. The waterfowl quacked hopefully at him, or rather his hand, hoping for a scrap of bread crust or a nice plastic.

The demon opened the palm of his hand with all the mystery and inconceivability of an expert magician, a light flourish of his hand revealing that it was, in all truth, empty. Apparently confounded by this, the duck let out a flabbergasted quack, its head canting to the left and to the right as it attempted to puzzle this particular mystery out.

Crowley snickered.

“You’re incorrigible,” Aziraphale huffed, but Crowley could still spy the beginnings of a smile quirking at the corners of his mouth. And then—

Something— a sliver of flapping, thin fabric, sealed tight around his throat, effectively snapping him back to the choke-hold of reality. His jaws and the back of his skull cracked loudly as the roar of the ocean rushed in his ears, his hands tugging ineffectually at the slippery band of cloth stringing him up amongst grasping branches and distant, mercurial glimpses of sky. For but a moment he thrashed about wildly, legs crooked and swinging as he attempted to free himself, and then in a rippling tear of seams and frayed ends he plummeted the remaining couple of feet to hit the ground with a heavy thump.

A few seconds skittered by as the demon simply laid there, breathing heavily and staring up at the tattered remnants of his tie wrapped tight around a twiggy branch. The tree it was attached to, he noticed, was pale as a stag’s rack, the very color of bone and remarkably familiar to him. His fingers idly traced the sore, weltering bruise now speckling around his neck.

Then, face twisted into a markedly sour look, Crowley shoved himself into a sitting position and glared at the bass-driven weapon. The gun had the sheer audacity to beep at him. Like a tiny little Italian car careening around precariously narrow side streets. Beep!

“I didn’t know you moonlighted as an alarm clock,” he quipped as he unsteadily wobbled to his feet. It felt like a dozen bed-springs were coiled up in his lower back, ready to let loose a zing of pain at any moment if he made a wrong move.

Beep!

Not deeming this audacious retort worthy of a response, Crowley unpleasantly stretched his limbs before setting off at a jumbled, clumsy step. Every footstep felt jarring, as if he were only walking across a child’s trampoline and hadn’t just fallen from the tree he had spent most of the morning in.

There was a cool little gurgling stream nearby and Crowley reckoned that the littered remains of the little yellow bird he had snatched up the night before would do nicely for a midday meal. Boy, how that tiny bird had sang!

The lacquered lenses of his shades slanted and gleamed as Crowley seated himself on a rock beside the trickling flow of burbling, rock-bedded water. He idly gnawed on a few remaining bones with some scant meat still clinging to them, relishing in the clear air and periwinkle blue sky. Scattered earthy tones intermingled with plumes of fragrant daylight fell through the cover of leaves, turning the overgrown grass the color of a fresh harvest of wheat tinged with orangey-yellow pizzazz.

“Huh. I suppose I did sleep in a little later than expected,” Crowley admitted as an aside to the dark-hued firearm, getting a brief flicker of bluish internal light and a curt boop for his trouble. “Aw, don’t be like that.”

He sighed heavily, brushing a smear of dried dirt from his knee as he stood. In the running waters of the stream he noticed a fluttering particle of yellow clinging to his chin and with an irate, jerky movement the remnants of his latest meal were all but gone.

His shoes left slippery, sliding tracks in the riverbank as he went along, clusters of leaves and stringy grass shifting pensively underfoot. Crowley shrugged his jacket up until the collar settled snug against the nape of his neck, feeling mildly exposed while rambling through the wooded shadows and boggy steppes with a bunch of homicidal maniacs capering about. He had come to appreciate the fact that he hadn’t run into anyone yet, though he suspected that might change soon enough.

Another thing that Crowley had started to really admire about this place was the reliability with which the scenery changed around him. The varying temperatures and climates mixed easily, flowing into one another in this glorious, strait-lacedly normal pattern that was of some comfort to him. It really was too bad that, when searching for the snow-capped mountains he had intended to skirt around the day before, Crowley was greeted by the sight of a whole share of nothing.

Standing upon a high precipice of rock, Crowley pursed his lips as he regarded the gaping abyss where the rocky stretch of mountainous region had once been. He turned, a few pebbles grounding underfoot, and squinted against a pale glimmering of sunlight to make sure that nothing else had abruptly vanished. Alas, all he could see were the frothy tops of trees and a few loosely-sketched buildings, most likely abandoned and inhabited by all kinds of nasty beasts.

Crowley sniffed and looked imploringly to the gun which had traveled with him thus far. “Well. I guess that little route of travel is out of the picture. Westward ho, then?”

A shaky hum stemmed through his fingers, kind of like one of those prank-y sticks of gum that give you a good electrical sting when you try to sneak a piece. The demon nodded once to himself, more than willing to take that answer and run with it.

With a lanky, unhurried stride that belied very little about how much attention Crowley truly paid his surroundings, the fallen angel and his musical weapon set off into the brush.