Just a Drabble I did 'cause I was bored....

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You're surrounded by darkness. No, wait... It's not darkness, it's night. Or it feels like night. You glance around and realize that you're in a forest. A forest from long ago, but how do you know that?

You find yourself walking warily through the trees. Wary of what though? You seem to be moving not of your own will... but, you suppose, this is a dream after all....

Suddenly there are whispers all around you. No, within you. In your head, your mind. There are so many, it's near impossible to distinguish one from another. Your breath quickens and you feel a headache coming on, but it is ignored and you begin to run. You're stumbling and trying as hard as you can to run away and out of the forest.Before it gets you. Before they get you. ....but what? Before what gets you? You are horribly confused and frightened at the same time. But you don't know why you're frightened, or why you're now running aimlessly to be free of the forest.

There! You see it; light! It hasn't been night, the leaves overhead had just been blocking out the sun. You're so close. Wheezing and gasping for air you make a frantic dash for the light, hope in your chest. You were going to make it! But then you feel something wrap around and snatch ahold of your ankles; right then left. You land heavily with a thud on the ground, the breath knocked out of you. If they're not broken your ribs are surely bruised by the feel of it. You kick and yell and try to scrabble forward. You were so close! Only a few steps away from freedom! But every thought of freedom is snatched away when you are roughly dragged backwards, back into the dark of the forest.

You scream and thrash about but more vines wrapped around you (so that's what grabbed you... wait, since when did vines move on their own?!). They held tight and your thrashing only seemed to make them squeeze tighter still. You couldn't breathe. There was the pain of needing air and receiving none. Yet still you tried to cry out. The lack of oxygen was starting to get to you. Through the haze of growing darkness you are faintly aware of more vines, trees and bushes even, plants of all kinds swarming around you. Reaching for you...

You hear a cry echo through the pain and darkness: "Inki!! Inki!!"
It takes you a second to realize that the call is coming from your own throat. Your mouth. But wait.. what is this word? It is not your native tongue, not a word you were raised to speak so fluently. Yet here you are screaming it over and over.

You realize then that this wasn't your voice. And come to think of it you recall that in your frantic clawing for safety to escape the vines, you hadn't noticed then, but those weren't your hands either. Those hands and arms were darkly tanned, calloused, and clothed in buckskins. Who was this person screaming this strange word and why were you now in their body?!

Then the scream came again: "Inki!"
Other words follow and somehow you recognize their meaning:

"Father! Help me father! Where are you, Coyote?!"

Elsu sat bolt upright, a cold sweat clinging to his brow and his breathing labored. He scrambled to his feet and glanced around wildly. After a few moments of confusion and fright passed he let out a shaky, heavy sigh and sank back to the ground. It seemed he'd fallen asleep outside again. It wasn't long, however, before the constant whispers came back:
"Are you okay?'
"Hmph, serves you right!"
"Did you dream? I wish I could dream~"
"Can I get some water here?!"
"What's wrong with you?..."
"Hehe, you look funny~"
"Why do humans even sleep? Your kind is so strange...."
He could hear them, all at once, and in this moment it struck a nerve...
He slapped his hands over his ears, as if he could block out the voices that way, and yelled out, "SHUT UP!!"
He'd probably just scared off every woodland creature within a quarter of a mile but at least, if only for a moment, the voices stopped. It was times like these that he really wished Donehogawa were around. Being near him was like a miracle. He couldn't hear the thoughts of a single plant and it was wonderful. Though it always worried him not to be able to hear Omba, he forced himself to accept it. He would not look a gift horse in the mouth, so to speak. He could still care for the little Scarlet Lobelia even if he couldn't hear it. All the other voices would be gone. His head, his mind, would be his own again.
But all those thoughts stopped when the whispers returned. He groaned and wondered what he was being punished for to have been born with such an ability. He then paused, putting his hands down, to wonder why he had woken up in such a panic anyway. He couldn't remember what he'd dreamed.... Oh well, he thought and began to drift off once more into a dreamless sleep, the lull of whispers now like white noise in the back of his head as tiredness suddenly seemed to seep into his being.....

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Coyote and Donehogawa mentioned here both belong to faiththestoryteller