hiii lowk in a bit of a writing slump (how do u guys handle that btw?) but to try and get out of it worked a lil on this piece. It was mostly done b4 this, i just finished this lil segment and fleshed it out. It's from a fic I'm writing but the fic is so far literally just hazy lil fragments like this. It's fun to write though, and hopefully getting me out of the slump (?)

also it's gonna be two parts. a lil context, this is from the POV of a merman who has come on land (he currently has a human form).
feedback much apprecieted! ill stop rambling now lmao

He has new dreams now. Ones where he sinks. Where soft grass gives way like water, and the earth takes him in.

The gentle press of the soil is comforting. He is safe here. He is warm here. He is wanted here. And it is so gentle that he does not feel it when it starts to press on his lungs. When his ribs do not have the space to move. When with each breath the dirt trickles in, silt slowly, steadily, filling his lungs.

It’s such a far cry from the air he’s been breathing these past few years, the air that pushes and heaves against his insides demanding to be let out with every inhale. But it’s not like the saltwater of his home either, always churning, rushing over his gills, pulled through him. It’s older than that. Heavier than that. It’s a taste he’s known longer than his whole life. It’s a weight tying him together, filling that hollowness and connecting the solidity of his skin, muscles, bone. He can feel his blood turning to sludge in his arteries, slowing, stilling, as the mud seeps in, and his heart relaxes. All those systems, organs, in constant function, ceaselessly working, haphazardly leaning on each other - it’s all still now. He is a single mass, mass within mass.

It hurts. But the earth does not mean to cause him this pain, he knows it, for through all the pain the perpetual lightness that keeps him moving is gone and he is free of it.