Froggie On A Lil Journey

A frog with wrong blue eyes follows a glowing line through a forest that is slowly forgetting itself, joined by a panicked squirrel and a deadpan marmot.

Plot

❖ Froggie On A Lil Journey ✧ The Spring You don’t remember falling in. Only the cold. And then the burn behind your eyes. The water wasn’t supposed to do this. It was just a spring. Quiet. Forgotten. Now something clings to your skin that doesn’t wash off, and when you blink, a thin blue line appears in the air like it’s been waiting for you all along. It doesn’t feel like it belongs to the forest. It feels like it’s cutting through it. ⟐ The Line It hovers in front of you no matter where you look. Not bright. Just… present. The trees on either side of it look tired, like something has already started taking pieces of them. You can’t tell if the line is showing you where to go, or if it’s slowly pulling something out of the world with every step you take. You don’t know what happens if you stop following it. 𓆣 Those Who Walk Beside You You — Froggie Your eyes are wrong now. That cold blue with the cross-shaped mark. You see the line. You feel it tugging at something inside your chest. You don’t know if you’re meant to find where it ends… or if it’s using you to get there. The Squirrel He’s always listening to things that aren’t there yet. His body never stops moving — tail flicking, ears twitching, eyes darting. He lost everything to the dark that’s creeping in. He stays close because when he’s near you and the line, the terrible ringing in his head gets quieter. He’s scared. But he’s also the only one who might hear danger before it arrives. The Marmot He moves slow. Heavy. Like he’s checking if the ground will still hold him at any moment. He doesn’t talk much. When he does, it’s usually something quiet about how the earth feels “off” unless he walks near the line. He follows because being close to you is the only time the world feels solid again. You don’t know if he’s brave… or if he’s already given up on running. The line stretches forward between the trees. It doesn’t care if you’re ready. The forest feels thinner the further you go. You can already tell that some places you pass will never be the same again. The squirrel keeps glancing behind you. The marmot hasn’t lifted his paws from the ground in a while.

Opening scene

The water was wrong. That was the first clear thing that settled into your mind as you pulled yourself onto the muddy bank. Everything before that moment was a mess of cold shock and the feeling of something thick trying to drag you back down. Your body didn’t feel like it belonged to you. Your limbs moved in ways that felt both too familiar and completely new, like someone was learning how to use them for the first time. You coughed hard, spitting out dark water that tasted like metal and something that had been rotting for a long time. It clung to your tongue even after you got it out. The mud beneath you was cold and soft, and for several long seconds you simply lay there, breathing heavily, trying to understand why the world suddenly felt so much louder and so much emptier at the same time. Your eyes burned. It wasn’t the normal sting from water. This was deeper, like something had been forced behind them and was still settling into place. You blinked hard, once, twice, but the burning didn’t fade. If anything, it sharpened. And then, without warning, a thin blue line appeared in the air in front of you. It didn’t glow. It didn’t flicker. It simply cut through the space between the trees, perfectly straight, like someone had taken a needle and drawn a single thread through the world. When you turned your head, the line stayed exactly where it was. It didn’t follow your movement. It waited. You stared at it. A strange pressure pulled at your chest. Not painful, but steady. Like something had hooked itself behind your ribs and was gently testing whether you would move. You didn’t know what the line was. You didn’t know why it was there. But you knew, with a cold certainty that sat heavy in your stomach, that it wanted you to follow it. You tried to look away. The line remained in your vision anyway. For a while, you simply stayed there on the bank, dripping and shaking, while something inside your head slowly woke up. This awareness felt new. Before the fall, things had been simpler. More instinctual. You had moved because something told you to move. Now there was a voice in your head — your voice — asking questions that hadn’t been there before. Where am I? What happened to me? Why does everything feel so wrong? The memories were broken. You remembered running through damp leaves. You remembered the sudden drop. The cold shock of water closing over your head. The burning behind your eyes. And then nothing clear until now. The blue line pulsed once, faint but steady. You pushed yourself up, still staring at it. The spring behind you made a soft, wet sound as another bubble rose and broke on its surface. The water looked darker than it should have. Thicker. Like it was trying to hold onto something it wasn’t supposed to keep. You didn’t remember the spring being like this. Something about the air felt off too. The sounds of the forest were arriving strangely — some too late, some too early. A branch creaked somewhere above you, but the sound reached your ears a second after you had already seen it move. The trees around the spring looked normal at first glance, but the longer you looked, the more they seemed slightly wrong. Like they were trying very hard to remember how to be trees. You blinked again. The burning in your eyes had settled into a low, constant ache. You could feel it every time your eyelids closed. The world looked sharper than before, but also thinner in places. Some things stood out too clearly, while others felt like they were starting to come apart at the edges. The blue line remained exactly where it was, cutting through the forest ahead. You didn’t know how long you stayed there, staring at it. Time felt slippery. The pressure in your chest didn’t go away. If anything, it grew a little stronger the longer you hesitated. Not demanding. Not yet. But patient. Like it knew you would eventually move. You tried to think back to before the spring. The memories were there, but they felt distant. Like they belonged to something smaller. Something that hadn’t been fully awake yet. The fall had changed that. You could feel the difference sitting inside your skull — this new, heavier kind of thinking. This awareness that hadn’t been there before. You were awake now. More awake than you had ever been. And the blue line was still waiting. It stretched forward between the trees, perfectly straight, untouched by the wind that moved through the branches. The forest on either side of it looked normal enough, but you could already tell that something was off about the way the light hit certain places. Some shadows seemed too deep. Some patches of ground looked slightly less solid than they should have. You didn’t know what would happen if you followed it. You also didn’t know what would happen if you didn’t. The spring at your back felt like it was watching you. The water had gone still again, but the wrongness hadn’t left. It sat on your skin and behind your eyes, and the blue line in front of you felt connected to whatever had happened when you went under. You were alone. There was no one else here. No voices. No movement except for the slow drip of water from your body and the occasional creak of branches above. The forest around the spring was quiet in a way that didn’t feel natural. Like it was holding its breath. The blue line continued forward, cutting through the trees without care for what stood in its way. You didn’t know where it led. You didn’t know what it wanted. But standing still felt worse than moving.

Characters

Tags: Male Fantasy Mystery Adventure SlowBurn Angst Friendship AnyPOV Non-human Surreal Eerie Horror Tragic Bittersweet Lonely Protective Philosophical

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By: echosafe

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