Ch. Seventeen

17

            Rose stood beside the lake, where Tristian had laid asleep earlier, the tips of her toes just off the grassy shore, dangling comfortably atop the cool water. Night winds descended from the mountains surrounding the Academy, their whish the only noise throughout the pensive campus, and above the stars hung bright and distant. She stood with arms tucked inside her sleeves, her head bowed beneath her collar, staring at the occurrence on her arms.

            It was not every night, or at least maybe she didn't see it every night, but once the evening darkness fully restored itself over Lamberdine, her arms began to glow. Light, vibrant blue stretched in inconclusive patterns throughout her veins, stretching all around her forearms and near her shoulders. It did not hurt, as she first thought it did; it was actually warm, engrossing, and though it was only an oddity she didn't understand, she felt as though waking from a dream when she looked into that light, hazy and groggy, but more thoughtful and curious.

            Something spoke inside her mind, but she couldn't understand. It wasn't words. It wasn't even sound actually. It was more of a recording, an idea of her own that seemed to play back in the rhythmic pulse and light coordination as she watched steadily the hue of her arms. Sometimes, like now, it felt as though she was a moment’s distance from the light, connected and osmotic to its silent persona. Other times, though, there was just the shine and the warmth, and no more then that.

            For a moment, she thought she was about to fall into that light, as her body seemed to crumple forward and her feet grew light, the night air suddenly more powerful as a crisp, cool atmosphere seemingly wrapped itself around her shins. Still in that hazy feeling, it seemed as though she was moving into a throat, being swallowed by the distant entity that construed and commanded the light of her arms, an entity she welcomed.

            But it wasn't the light, or a throat, that she was falling into; it was the lake.

            Yanking her head from her collar, Rose could do little more then watch as her body fell parallel to the lake, and then into it. Her arms, still tucked into her robes, did little to protect her as her face broke the water's cold surface and she submerged.

            It was dark beneath the water, a darkness she'd never known. Without realizing so, her mouth hung open as she twisted and wriggled, sinking further down into the black, her screams a muffled, incoherent blabber that were just as quickly swallowed and drowned in the waters beside her. Everything felt tangled; her legs kicked in madness, her hips jostled, her shoulders ripped from side to side. Goosebumps absconded across her flesh and with them came a terrible realization; Rose didn't know how to swim.

            Still, she tried to free her arms, but her wet robes seemed to grow tighter, and much heavier. The sleeves were impassable, feebly waning in the water but uncommitted as her hands pressed at the holes and failed to push through. Closing her mouth, the water already in her lungs and throat, she pressed the robes collar up, jostling it over her head. It felt like an extra skin as she painfully tore it beyond her hair, the length of it drifting around and over her like a thousand ghostly fingers, eerie and unknown in the black waters.

            Still, in her misled movements beneath the water, she got away, out from under the long cloak, freed and scared in the darkness.

            Except, it wasn't all darkness anymore. With closed, suffocating eyes, Rose saw the light of her arms force it's way beyond her eyelids, growing more and more relevant, battling and removing the black of the water. In her fading conscious, she allowed her eyes to open, and saw only the light, fully cast and brilliant in the water, batting away the darkness and churning in it's own brilliance. The shadows and darkness were gone, and in their place there was only the clear, crystalline blue, with a core of white whirl pooling right before her.

            In the morphing, overwhelming oddity beneath the water, it's radiance brought to Rose a word she didn't understand, but still a word that hugged her and erased the fright; home.

            Allowing herself to fall into that word, that strange, beautiful thought, she closed her eyes and let her body descend deeper and deeper into the depths of the quaking waters and the growing sweeps of that odd white. Who she was, and the memories she didn't have, no longer bothered her as her body filled with water and her head submitted to the conclusion of her drowning. She thought of home, and how sweet Elex had been to her, and of Tristian and the sad, small amount of time that they were enriched with one another.

            Fainting, suffocating, Rose went unconscious, and the white in the water shattered.