Pictures of You [Completed]

Thirty-four. New Horizons

Gentle waves lapped over Luke's arms and legs, waking him from sleep. Or just a nap he was taking. Either way, he was awake now, looking up from the blue up to the much brighter blue.

There he was floating on the water, adorned in sea foam and salt. The flat blue horizon all around him didn't scare him though. He embraced it. He felt pure. Cleaned.

Ocean ran through his mind, and the infection from his brain was cleaned. Luke felt free.

He felt like a deity of his salted plane. He didn't mind the waves that covered and uncovered his bare skin because it felt like himself. He could be the ocean in this life.

Above him was bright blue sky adorned with stars. Stars in the day time. Stars that made the sky all that much brighter. He couldn't count them. They were beautiful and glimmering. They lit up his pale glittering skin. It was almost paper thin and blue underneath.

Blue sky. Blue ocean. Blue veins.

This was life, and motion, and connection. He'd never felt more content in his life. He stared at the stars for a long time, wondering which ones belonged to him.

And just with a turn of his head, Luke could see the moon. Full and bright and beautiful. Every crater, every dent. Bright and white and huge in the sky. Luke reached up, to point at it. To trace it with his fingers, like an artist inspecting his work.

She tugged at the sea around him ever so gently, and he followed her. Pushing and pulling whenever she moved.

The waves bobbed him on the top, and he floated never fully being consumed by the surface. Suspended over the depths below.

He knew there were depths. Hundreds of thousands of feet below him, and yet he stayed blissfully at the neutral point. On the line where the sky met sea—wherever the line was. It was hard to tell far enough out.

Here he felt safe. Here he may not control himself, but the worst that could happen to him
Was that he swayed up and down. Resisting planetary gravity and falling in line with celestial movements.

Above was crisp nothingness. The bluish white offered nothing but peace. He'd never reach the stars. He'd never reach the moon. They were just pretty things to look at. Which, he could imagine the earth was too from far enough away.

Above the atmosphere was a great white void that held nothing but peace and white noise. And Luke had no desire to go there. To leave his comfort. To bend the pull of his planet to his own will. He didn't want his will. He wanted to lay here.

Below was dark. Nothing lied down there. Nothing could. The salt was too much. All that moved below the surface was the rapid currents. And even below that? Probably excruciating pressure that would liquify Luke in seconds.

Luke didn't want that. He wanted to stay. His bright blue sky, his bright blue ocean. Safe in between the two.

He heard the bird long before he ever saw it. Great iron creature sailing over his sky. He wondered if it could see him. He wondered if this majestic creature with its hefty wingspan could see the small speck of white on vast blue.

Probably not.

He wished it would go away. He wished it would fly out of sight. But even if he closed his eyes he could hear the great hum of its wings under the water.

Disturbing his peace.

He wondered if maybe it could see him. Maybe that's why it was there. The bird had shown up for him. A lone survivor of something that happened in a place far away from here. Where there wasn't water all around him. Where he didn't have the comforting tickle of the sea foam on his skin.

Dread gathered under the skin of his belly. His stomach felt choppy. The moon—his companion, his body above his body—stirred up the sea. Feeling the same anxiousness as him.

The stars and sun seemed to shine brighter. And what Luke first took as a spotlight, could have truly been a comfort. The sun warming the earth for the moon's distress.

But no matter what the sun did, he couldn't block her dread for too long. And he couldn't block Luke's either. The darkness balled in his tummy was dead weight. And slowly—slow enough to be conscious of it—Luke sank below the surface.

It was a slow descent. Cool and bright still, but broken and bluer. 

Luke didn't look much around him. It scared him that the surface got darker the further away from him it got. And it went on forever.

More dread, further down.

He felt like a sand bag. No longer pure and clear and cleaned, he felt heavy. Drowning, except he could breathe. It didn't scare him that he could breathe underwater. He always knew he could.

There was nothing around him for hundreds of thousands of miles. Except for that bird. He could still hear the ring buzzing through the water. It's constant call.

It was so cold. Colder than it should be. And there was no way to warm himself up.

He missed his sun. The sun that warmed the sky for him. Trapped inside of his own ocean made him long for the surface.

Already the pressure built up around him. His skin and muscles—those blue veins—were tight to his bones. His pulse pounding around inside his skull.

This was no way to die, but he couldn't drown. So he was stuck. A sand bag falling straight to the bottom.

A brush of frigid moving water would brush past his arm, or rush against his back ever now and then, and Luke imagined he was in the oceans veins. A foreigner belonging back on the surface.

His being down here would lead to some form of death, and if the ocean was a body, Luke would be obliterated by its immune system.

There was salt water in Luke's blood now though. He felt it seeping through his pores. He felt it sloshing around in his ears nearly filled to the brim with the stuff. Not that it made a difference.

He was no mermaid. He was no siren. He was no god.

He understood it all now. Was he the ocean? Or just an observer? Was he a deity of water? Or did the water just treat him well when he felt well?

There! Right under him...Something floating, some one.

And for the first time luke swam down, pressure bore down on him on all sides. It was holding him together at this point.

The skeleton was old. Years old. But Luke knew who it was immediately. He hugged the old skeleton to him. "Oh my sweet, Ashton..." Luke whispered. "I'm so so sorry..."

Luke inspected the bones gently. The great ball that had been weighing on him lifted and he could move. He could just float for a second, but by this point he was far enough below, how would he know if he was moving or not?

He kicked his feet, arm around Ashton's spine. He had to get him to the sun. He had to get him back, and he needed to get himself back.

One handed, he cut through the water. Still heavy with dread, but this time he had purpose. "I'm gonna get you out..." he promised to his Ashton. "I can save us both..."

Luke watched his skin peel away as he swam towards the surface, but he didn't stop. He felt sick, but he wasn't gonna stop. He saw bone and veins. No blood, just white decaying flesh falling off of him in chunks.

It was so cold.

He had to make it in time. He had to make it. He had to mak...