Drowning Is Just Another Way To Suffocate
It was as if the world were washing away.
Leaving only a fragile glass to brittlely break away...
...with every breath she took.
It was hard to breathe. Cold rain was falling down from a colorless sky, slipping down her dry cheeks. They replaced all the tears she had locked away deep inside of her. The sounds of the world became dull and almost muffled. How long had she stood there, staring past everything around her? The wind tussled her wild dark hair and rain bit at her pale skin. Tilting her head up, she let the rain pinch and scratch at her skin, allowing it to drown everything else out.
She wouldn't ever again hear him. Never again would he put his hand on her head and call tell her how proud of her he was. He'd never scold her or laugh with her ever again. He was gone. And all that was left was empty space.
Her dad was dead.
Not buried in the ground. Where she'd be able to visit his bones. Not drifting through space. To wander the stars untouched by time. Just gone. Vaporized in the space between Earth and endless nothingness. The Arkers who had crash landed on Earth, instead of bring comfort and security, had brought her merely the fact of her father's death. He had given his life in the Culling. The day they had sent rockets blazing across the sky, bright shooting stars had crossed the inky sky. A mass funeral, viewed from the Earth below.
There would be no goodbye. There would be no see you soon. He was just gone. Instead of feeling the relief of never again having to worry or feel concerned for what the future held, there was just a numb nothing.
Rain soaked her clothes, turning her to heavy lead sinking softly into mud. And then her feet started to move. An unsteady stumble at first, then a frantic walk, and finally a full of wind-whipping sprint. Past faceless people who never remembered her name. Past curious eyes who didn't think to step in her way. To the gate. She had to stop then and look a guard in the face. Someone her memory told her she should know. But she just pushed by them, their face changing from confused and concerned to surprise.
Then she was running again.
Past blurring trees and hissing leaves. Her mind realized where she was heading.
The river.
Never mind there were people on her heels. There were melting away. Everything was melting and breaking away into dust.
Thalia felt the encompassing crash of water envelop her and all at once she felt the crushing cold slam into her senses. The rushing roar of water around her and the freezing water around her, it woke up her senses. For as heavy as she felt, she didn't sink to the bottom very quickly. Instead...
She floated.
It was quiet.
There was nothingness.
Just like the nothingness she hadn't been able to save her father from.
Was this what not existing felt like?
It was uncomfortable. The pressure she had felt deep in her stomach now traveled up to her chest.
Right. There was no air.
She opened her mouth and bubbles raced up to the surface.
And she floated. Sinking slowly.
It was almost peaceful. The nothing. And with her numbness replaced with a burning cold from the water and the pain in her chest from slowly losing air, the dark haired girl felt something in her release itself.
Curling into herself, she hardly felt the arms that had wrapped around her and began jerking her to the surface.
Her head broke the surface and the sounds of the world around her rushed at her all at once. The roar of the rain and the splashing of water and her gasping turning into uncontrollable heaving sobs. She felt all of it at once. And with every gut gripping sob, she felt as though it were rushing out of her. Everything was trying to get out of her all at once. Coughing and gasping and crying, everything at once. Even sounds of her slicing sadness were escaping in the chaos.
Laying where her rescuer had dragged her to, she curled in on herself, for once letting herself just feel everything she had always bottled up tight. It was racking her body with the force unleashing the flood had come with. Her stomach clenched again and again, forcing water out, her lung pushing air back in. And with that air she howled and wailed and sobbed and cried. It made an earthquake of her body, but the rain on her back cooled the burning of her skin.
Finally, when she felt as though she couldn't cry any more, strangled sobs slipped into tired tremors.
And she didn't feel so horribly numb anymore. The pressure inside of her had been released, and even in the violence of it coming out, she was left feeling somehow better.
He couldn't hurt anymore, her father. He'd feel that soft peaceful nothing like a blanket wrapping around him and maybe there would be a light that shone through it all. Maybe a million lights, like stars. And he would see her mother there. And their parents before them. And theirs before them. And they wouldn't ever be alone with all the others who had given up their lives up in the Ark or lost them down on the ground.
They would never be cold or in pain or alone.
They wouldn't suffer feeling all the things she was feeling. Ever again.
