The Triton

Chapter 26: Vivien

That night, after my makeup had been taken off and I'd been stripped of my clothing, I tucked myself beneath my bedsheets, pressing into the small indent I'd made in the bed.

I was so exhausted, I didn't even realize I hadn't put the necklace back on, or that I hadn't snuffed the scented candle beside my bed. Darkness came quickly, enveloping and surrounding my eyesight so intensely, I thrust my eyes open, thirsting back for the light of those yellow stones, to extinguish the candle that I knew not to leave burning.

Nothing. Darkness, absolute. My body ached, sore, torn to pieces, far worse than after training. I could feel the stabbing pain of what must have been a broken rib pressing against my lung. Intense pain rocketed from it with each breath, and when I looked down, my eyes slowly adjusting, I saw a slash against my palm––but my palm was not my own.

It was caked in grime, darkened, but I could see the strength of its color beneath it. It was covered in fiery, scarlet red scales–– it was Sasha's palm.

I couldn't raise the palm, no, but it was mine, I was looking at it from my own view, through my own eyes––but then I felt the eyes shift, without my directive, surveying herself, the damage to her body.

Then I sensed a thought, not my own, drift across my consciousness as clearly as though my mind had been the one to think it.

Jaquelyn?

Her eyes drifted lazily about the confined space, a darkness so complete. Then things began to rush over me––memories. Her memories, images and feelings and thoughts and worries that coalesced and poured into me, memories of a childhood, of a merfolk city I'd never seen, its streets and its people, flashed in my head in a fragile torrent, intensely vulnerable.

Jaquelyn?

The thought, her thought, flowed through me again as I tried to decipher what bits of her life I could sift through. It pooled in me, the guilt of knowing so much, so many things, but I couldn't control whatever was showing me this. Was this where Sasha was, right now? Was this another time in her life?

Where...

The pain of her struggle stabbed into me, violent and unrepressed, her emotions mine, as was her physical pain that throbbed in her core, her chest, her hand.

She brushed her finger across the biggest wound, wincing at its strength. My stomach plummeted, and while I could not physically shake or breath on my own, the pain and anxiety that filled in me was very, very real.

The most clear and vivid memories from Sasha's consciousness––the warm, gentle touch of another's hand, a playful look in her eyes. The other merfolk was blue-scaled and brown-eyed, a fierce undercut to her hair. Sasha turned, gently pulling on the other merfolk's hand, a playful smile filling her soul, my soul, as she gestured down the street.

The other merfolk pulled back, pulling Sasha close to her, tilting her chin up. I knew her name like it was my name: Jaquelyn. Fires burned in those eyes.

I was pulled away from those memories, only to be flooded with new ones. Hours later, they sat upon a tall building's roof, feet dangling in the waters that surrounded them, hands still held, the two surveyed the city around them, still bustling with activity, despite the obvious late hour. It wasn't the city of Mera, certainly, it was...somewhere else, I guessed, another merfolk city they seemingly had found the exact center of. In the way only dreams can assure you of things, I knew its name. Ultare.

Jaquelyn played with a knife, a silver thing that caught the small lights of the city below, weaving it through her fingertips in a quick pace, speaking about something or another.