Sickle lost herself to the ocean once that became most of what conquered the world. She was sometimes among the Baltians, mimicking them as best as she could, though she doubts they truly accepted her as one of their own. Sometimes she was a shark, or an octopus - choosing the animals that eat others, choosing those that seem the strongest. Because that is what she finds she needs. Barbs and sharp teeth and claws where she can get them - any manner of thing that can protect her.

She has lost track of the years, lost track of everything, and only once she has started to forget the faces of her past and the edges have lost her sharpness does she think it is safe to return to the surface.

Some part of her knows she shouldn’t forget, that they should all stand in stark relief in her memory - but many are lost. Some names linger, and in other cases it is faces, but she has to wonder whether she would recognize any of them if she were to walk by them. Sickle does not expect them to recognize her. She was a small, scared thing the last time anyone saw her. And she has changed.

Sickle chooses night as the time she emerges, the blue glow of her body intensifying as she rises to the surface of the river where it is at its deepest, close to the ocean. It will be easier on her eyes, she reasons, to go from the darkness of the water to darkness on land.

They are silver now, those eyes - standing out against the dark teal coat she wears.

She pointedly does not think about how hypocritical it is of her to change her appearance, when she believes she is no longer the victim she had been.

She also does not think about how she begins by only emerging her head, so that the gentle current of the water swirls around her cheeks, and gives her the chance to look around a little before fully committing to this return.