It is pitch dark.

You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

....He waves a hand in front of his face.  He doesn't see anything, and several seconds too late he realizes how much that would have sucked, if his stinging palm had been bleeding - but it's not, and he's fine.  Still, probably smarter to stay close to the ground.  He'll feel around the floor a little; what's the texture like around him?  - And what's that noise.

Oh, it's probably nothing. It certainly looks like nothing.

The floor is rock, with some weirdly smooth parts marking it as probably a natural cave shaped by water.

His track record is not great here but maybe he can stand up and walk.  Away from the noise.  As fast as he can while attempting to feel out where his feet are going before he puts any weight on them.

He bonks his head on the ceiling as soon as he tries to stand up more than about 80% of the way, and then something flomphs noiselessly onto his head and over his face. Squeeeeeeeze.

Ow.  - And, oh, crap.  What on Earth is happening to him.  Why are so many things happening to him - can he get it off, can he - thrash around at all usefully - if he bangs his head at the ceiling or - ow, a wall - does that - seem like it's making any progress towards getting the thing off of him -

Banging his head on surfaces does in fact make the thing react, though not, like, in a way that involves letting him go. Maybe it would if he did it a few more times?

And then his forehead is so cold it feels hot, like some kind of externally-applied brain freeze, and the flomphing thing shrivels up in a way that incidentally exposes his mouth, and there's a girl's voice, and a hand presumably belonging to the same individual, ripping the thing off his head.

....oh .....good.

He's going to lie here and cough about that.

Words words words?

"Hnnng - guh?"

Oh, crap.  Now he's definitely bleeding, and at least some of it's on his face so it doesn't matter where his hand is - he should not throw up.  It would be so, so great if he didn't throw up on his incomprehensible maybe-rescuer.  Probably he's concussed, that must be why he can't understand her.  ...This is so bad.  (And he should not throw up.)

The sound of her breathing drops - maybe she's bent down for some reason - and there's a scraping noise, and then -

- light! She's holding a rock and it's GLOWING!

- Ow.  Bright.

He swallows and attempts a, "Hi."  It's only somewhat gurgley.  "Thanks."

Words words? Sigh. She waves her hand in a finger-wiggly sort of way and says more words. The thing - looks more like an octopus than most things do - that was probably the thing suffocating him twitches, and she says more words and does a finger-gun at it and it ices over and goes still.

That's terrifying!  In many ways less so than other things that have happened to him in the past few minutes, but still terrifying.  ...Is she gray, or maybe green or something; at first he thought that was just the light but his own skin doesn't seem to be doing that...

- Actually he does feel pretty green himself.  He loses the battle against his nausea, though he at least manages to first roll over and face away from the scary lady who saved him.

She does not look impressed with this. She picks up the dead strangly thing by its least icy tentacle, puts it in her knapsack, and pulls from the bag a large cloth rectangle, which may genuinely be grey. She shakes it out to its full large rectangleness, and makes to wrap him in it, occasionally uttering words.

He is, objectively, extremely unimpressive right now.  The blanket's nice to have; he scoots in a direction conducive to not getting vomit on it.  "Thank you.  And, uh, sorry."

And now she's gesturing for him to get up on his feet. She's dropped her glowing rock on the ground.

He can pick up the rock and attempt to stand, yeah.  Does it look like she wants it back?

No, the rock is all his but she has opinions about where they go - no, no, they will go there AFTER his incredibly bizarre clothes are all wrapped up in this big cloak so nobody looks too close.

...Sure, okay; he's not really sure what that's about but it's fine - how does she react if he tries to collect his duffel bag from where it fell off during the octopussing?

Oh, she's not thrilled about that. She frowns at it, tapping her chin. Will it fit under the cloak without showing off his shoes... not really. Can some of the objects fit in her bag so that the rest of them and the duffel itself can go under the cloak?

Yeah, it's not huge.

"Sorry."

Encouraging smile when he says words! Object-rearranging. She pauses to take a closer look at a bunch of the objects but eventually has some of them tucked away in her bag and the rest munched into a compact arrangement under the cloak he's borrowing. She inspects him and deems him acceptable to follow her. Beckon beckon.

Oh, okay.  A smile.  That's... better than he was expecting.

Follow follow!  Kind of slowly, and with regular bumps into the side of the cave's wall.  And occasional trampling on the cloak's hem that sends him pitching forward.

- hand on the shoulder to stop him. More waving and she boops him on the nose. Words words. Also, his FEET are RIGHT THERE, it's suddenly more obvious than it's ever been in his life exactly where his feet are.