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I couldn’t see. Tentacles of cold clawed at my face; slashes of air caressed my skin as though it could taste the fear leaking out my pores. Nails of ice racked down my spine as I tumbled too and fro. Stuck in a washing machine of frigid verglas. I was a blur of action, a smudge on an inky page, so irrelevant but yet undeniably noticeable.
The swathes of the tides were suffocating, crushing my chest with grim determination. Eager to steal the air from my lungs, smother my heart to a dull ache, turning my thoughts to an endless stream of consciousness, memories flashing before my eyes. Glimpses of happiness; a kaleidoscope of colour rushing past my eyelids. The cold slowly dissipated, and a gentle calm engulfed me, cradled me amongst murky gloom. It held me tight and wrapped its arms around me. I forgot I was sinking; instead I was floating. I was being welcomed home.
But then a warm hand was grasping my wrist, kicking against the blackness, against the soft cold, wrenching me from my thoughts, the fake calm I had lulled myself into to dull the panic. My eyes locking on a pair -not too unlike mine- orbs of amber, flecked with gold, a halo around the iris. Like Apollo, a burst of light dragging me towards the surface. The seconds sifted through my fingers, leaking a trail of embers in the dark, like little sparks of hope; drifting downwards. A candle in the desolate dark.
That flame grew: enveloped me until the safety net had finally disappeared. Air burst into my lungs- real air, a crisp salty breeze grasping my hair, cradling my head above the surface. Serene sunlight bursting through my eyelids, a crimson stain on my heart. A warm glow upon my skin, reminding me of those golden eyes that had enraptured me, saved me, fought against my mind, forged through my jumbled thoughts until they were a messily woven plait. They’d given me a glimpse of what I could have. What I can and will be because of him.
Boys POV
A dive, and I was in; reaching out like a silent sentinel, ripping her from the lull of the water, my wrist encircling her own. Her eyes snapping open briefly; bright blue-green pearls that shone in the murky depths. They looked haunted somehow -as though they weren’t really here- a door to a darker place, a sheen of words embedded by a needle no surgeon could cut out. Only the careful threading of sunlight could hope to coax it out. If I could, I’d duel against the needle, feinting and lunging until maybe, it would choose to fall out instead. Or maybe I’d end up retreating, the needle killing me slowly, a thousand tiny pinpricks until I too, was irreparable, a bloodied, broken mess of fragmented thoughts. Perhaps I’d learn to forge a wall of obsidian; impenetrable, imposing: a blockade of indifference against the hurled knives and spiked grenades thrown by honey tongued mouths.
And yet I still cut a path through the deluge of melancholic water. Everything forgotten, just the shell of a girl held close to my heart as I broke the surface. Sunlight, warmth. A euphoric breeze dusting my face with salt.