Just edited what will be the shortest chapter of Planting Life, and all I can think is 'wow I did good.' I had completely forgotten this chapter existed and absolutely blew me away.
Entire chapter is just internal experience of autistic character going through sensory overload on the edge of shutdown.
-----
Kyawtchais struggled to keep eir head up, eir feet moving. The street was quiet, not like the market areas and docks where the familyless lived. But from inside the compounds came the noises of jungle fowl, children playing, grandparents yelling… and over (Or under) it all the scrape-scrape-scrape of Kyawtchais' own feet against the road.
The sounds, every one of them, even the littlest, hurt. Every movement hurt.
Ey came around the corner and saw tall-Lefeng… no, guarding-Lefeng waiting, hand on eir long knife, watching the street behind Kyawtchais. Safe, safe with Lefeng to guard and Kolchais to watch.
Kyawtchais dropped the distaff and sank to the ground, barely managing to hold onto the spindle with its burden of thread.
Voices around em, but ey couldn't separate out the words. Noise. Just noise.
A gentle hand under eir arm hurt, like lightning under eir skin and ey flinched away. But rather than letting go, the hand tightened, firm, crushing the lightning, grounding em. The hand lifted, and another on eir other arm, firm, firm, holding em so ey didn't float away into the nothing, the grey cloudy fog that filled eir mind.