Unsinkable

Into Nothingness

The ocean water was freezing, but somehow Winter's hand could not bear the cold— not without Jacin's fingers intertwined with her own. She had half a mind to allow herself to sink down, slumping against the waves until she reunited with Jacin. But she remembered his words to her, telling her to kick no matter what, and she couldn't ignore him. She had to believe that he would find her— that somehow, he would rise to the surface despite his lack of a lifejacket.

Her legs kicked with a ferocity as her lungs burned. She had exhaled a great deal of oxygen upon impact with the water, the shock of the frigid surface surprising the breath right from her lungs. If she could see, she knew that there would have been black spots in her vision; but everything was black. There were shadows, then there was darkness, and then there was this: the absolute absence of everything other than the cold seeping into one's skin, erasing all that they had once been or ever hoped to be.

She knew that she was about to break the surface as her ears popped with relief, a feeling she could somehow still recognize despite the agonizing pain gripping her body. She sucked in lungfuls of air, each breath stabbing at her chest with lightning bolts of torment.

Around her, other heads were popping out of the reflectionless surface, their eyes ablaze with panic as they huffed and puffed into the night. Some cried out for loved ones while others sobbed. There were ones, too, frozen motionless by shock— or at least Winter hoped that it was shock that caused their faces to remain in such a way.

"Jacin," Winter called, her breath swirling around her like inky tendrils of smoke. "Jacin."

Panic seized her chest as the full-weight of what was going on struck her like a sucker-punch. Jacin didn't have a lifejacket— he had only his own arms and legs to drag his body out from the depths of the sea. He was alone; she had let him go.

"Jacin," Winter screamed, though her breath caught on the word and she began to cough. "Jacin, where are you?"

She tried to swim, but her limbs felt like blocks of ice, heavy and large and useless. Her body flailed about through the water, smacking into other lost souls, weeping tears of ice into an ocean of despair.

On the night she'd met Jacin, she hadn't much contemplated the water. Of course she knew that it was cold— but she hadn't considered the lack of warmth to be the deadliest part of it. She'd thought that jumping in would kill her due to the impact; that if it didn't, at least she could give up and allow herself to drown in its great depths. But it was the temperature of the water that held the most danger— the freezing, biting droplets of water that sapped the life from all who lay within it.

"Jacin!"

It was strange how the water not only froze her body, but her mind. Already she was struggling to remember what was going on. Perhaps it was all just a dream— a nightmare— and soon she would wake up. But at what point in her life would she awake at? Would it be just that morning, when she'd gone to breakfast with Aimery, still giddy from the night of dancing before? Or would it be the night before she'd met Jacin, sleeping fitfully upon the ship that stole her away from her home? Perhaps, if this were all but a dream, she would awake in the arms of her father, a girl who was safe and loved and therefore happy.

"Jacin," Winter called, her teeth chattering violently, her lips splitting and spilling blood down her chin. Even her blood ran cold down her face.

A hand caught on Winter's shoulder. "Jacin," she cried, feeling distinctly happy that he was with her, though her brain couldn't exactly work out why. But the hand on her back was not that of Jacin's— at least not the Jacin she knew. For the hands upon her were frantic, pulling at her body— pushing her down into the sea. Jacin had always lifted her toward the heavens; he would never shove her down to hell.