10-09-2026, 08:52 PM
For the briefest flicker, there is peace, absolute quiet. She has closed those useless eyes and all the world has gone dark and, for a singular instant, she does not feel the crushing grip of that great hand or the vicious jaws that had dragged her down, down, down.
But this is not a place of peace. She had resigned herself to another death, this one perhaps the most brutal of them all, but she blinks open those useless eyes a second time. And to see, she thinks, must mean that she is not dead at all. To still be tethered to this useless body must mean that this is not death but something else altogether. And it is something else altogether, this vast blue. Water, she understands, and yet she breathes freely. She moves freely.
(Ironic, then, that the second death had begun with her dragging in a lungful of water and drowned. Drowned, drowned, drowned. The water had not been this blue, though, it had not been this deep.)
This is not death, she thinks, but a rebirth. Her useless body has been made anew. Gone are the feathers, the hindlegs, replaced by scales and fins. She almost confuses the relief of it for a gift, the fear that she had felt as she’d been dragged, bleeding, into the fissure begins to dissipate. Silly to think that the creature who’d sent his hounds after them might treat them with such kindness as to provide them with some new, better life. Hounds do not drag you to heaven, she knows, they drag you to hell.
She looks up when the water begins to stir, a cold rush of new fear surging through her at the sight of these strange creatures. They do not look as inherently violent as the hounds, but they do not appear natural either. She’d known of the magic that allowed others to breathe underwater, to live there, to blend seamlessly into that great, blue world, but she had never seen them up close. She had certainly never been one of them.
They watch, beady-eyed, and she is powerless to do anything but stare back at them. Until one moves forward, separating herself from the rest, hissing her question. “Anaemone,” she answers, automatic, ironic that there behind her a whole colony of anemones sway in the current. She shrinks, as if she might join their ranks, invisible to the rest of these creatures. Shrinks when the blue stallion glides forward, shrinks when the shadow looms overhead. There it is, she thinks, proof that this is hell, this creature unlike anything she’s ever seen before, even moreso than the rest of them.
It happens faster than she can register it, the great creature swooping, snapping its tremendous jaw, all that blood. The screaming, the scattering. She flounders in the melee. For a moment all she can hear is her heartbeat until all those sounds come swimming back to her, absolute chaos. And she does not know where to go, but she knows that she cannot stay here, sharkbait. So she swims in no direction in particular, looking up sharply at the sound of the mare’s voice, beckoning. There, into the cave. She thinks to go, but before she can move, the blue stallion calls out.
(There is no way out of the cave, she understands, should the beast make its way in, there would be no escaping. Through the coral there is open water, cursed vulnerability. And yet, there is the possibility of escape.)
So she follows the stallion’s voice. Through the narrow reef and into the unknown.
But this is not a place of peace. She had resigned herself to another death, this one perhaps the most brutal of them all, but she blinks open those useless eyes a second time. And to see, she thinks, must mean that she is not dead at all. To still be tethered to this useless body must mean that this is not death but something else altogether. And it is something else altogether, this vast blue. Water, she understands, and yet she breathes freely. She moves freely.
(Ironic, then, that the second death had begun with her dragging in a lungful of water and drowned. Drowned, drowned, drowned. The water had not been this blue, though, it had not been this deep.)
This is not death, she thinks, but a rebirth. Her useless body has been made anew. Gone are the feathers, the hindlegs, replaced by scales and fins. She almost confuses the relief of it for a gift, the fear that she had felt as she’d been dragged, bleeding, into the fissure begins to dissipate. Silly to think that the creature who’d sent his hounds after them might treat them with such kindness as to provide them with some new, better life. Hounds do not drag you to heaven, she knows, they drag you to hell.
She looks up when the water begins to stir, a cold rush of new fear surging through her at the sight of these strange creatures. They do not look as inherently violent as the hounds, but they do not appear natural either. She’d known of the magic that allowed others to breathe underwater, to live there, to blend seamlessly into that great, blue world, but she had never seen them up close. She had certainly never been one of them.
They watch, beady-eyed, and she is powerless to do anything but stare back at them. Until one moves forward, separating herself from the rest, hissing her question. “Anaemone,” she answers, automatic, ironic that there behind her a whole colony of anemones sway in the current. She shrinks, as if she might join their ranks, invisible to the rest of these creatures. Shrinks when the blue stallion glides forward, shrinks when the shadow looms overhead. There it is, she thinks, proof that this is hell, this creature unlike anything she’s ever seen before, even moreso than the rest of them.
It happens faster than she can register it, the great creature swooping, snapping its tremendous jaw, all that blood. The screaming, the scattering. She flounders in the melee. For a moment all she can hear is her heartbeat until all those sounds come swimming back to her, absolute chaos. And she does not know where to go, but she knows that she cannot stay here, sharkbait. So she swims in no direction in particular, looking up sharply at the sound of the mare’s voice, beckoning. There, into the cave. She thinks to go, but before she can move, the blue stallion calls out.
(There is no way out of the cave, she understands, should the beast make its way in, there would be no escaping. Through the coral there is open water, cursed vulnerability. And yet, there is the possibility of escape.)
So she follows the stallion’s voice. Through the narrow reef and into the unknown.
