𝐏𝐘𝐑𝐑𝐇𝐈𝐂 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄, 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐲 𝐣𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬𝐨𝐧

01 - elia is ready to kill goats

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪

DROWNING, apparently, is a great way to start a morning.

Normally, she appreciates the sea. There's something so calming about the sound of the waves, like some ancient lullaby sent by Poseidon to lull you into a slumber. The light on the water looks like glitter, like the clashing of two worlds, sun and sea refracting and bouncing off each other in perfect unison.

But then the ocean is angry and you are drowning.

Head bobbing up and down in the waves, she can feel the sharp steel of the shackles around her wrists cutting into her skin. The waves are crashing around her head, whipping her neck around with their force, and she can feel the rock against her back, cold and rough, scraping away at her soft skin.

There's the roaring of water, and then she's under again. She refuses to exhale in an attempt to conserve air— though there isn't anything to breathe in but salt.

But then, the water has hands— hundreds of them, closing around her throat and head and chest. Her nose burns, her lungs ache, and her head feels like it might burst.

Her every instinct is begging her to breathe, begging for oxygen, yet she commands herself— don't breathe.

She flails her chained arms in a frantic effort to force her head above the surface, but the currents keep her down. Up is down and left is right and she might as well be swimming deeper into the roaring waters. For a brief moment, one hand emerges into the cold air, but then she's back under and still can't breathe.

She begins a chant in her mind— don't breathe, don't breathe, don't breathe don't breathe don'tbreathedon'tbreathedon't—

She breathes. The saline floods into her mouth, stinging her throat and eyes and nose. The cold, salty water almost seems to replace her, first her lungs, then her blood, then her brain, then her heart. She is the water now, and slowly, her flailing comes to a stop.

She coughs in a last-ditch effort to expel the water from her lungs, from her mind, from every part of her, but all there is is the ocean and the water and the cold.

She'd never been afraid of dying, just of what came after, but now, she wanted to get out, to go home, but there was nowhere to go anymore. It was just the water.

For a moment, she thinks she feels a gentle hand brush her own, but then it's gone.

Just as she believes all hope is gone, the cuffs around her wrists are gone, and strong arms pull her above the rushing waves. She is coughing and heaving, shivering in someone's warm embrace. In bleary vision, she can make out dark curls, a flash of bright blue, and the feeling of forever.

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪

SNAPPING AWAKE WITH A STRANGLED GASP, Elia nearly slammed her head into the bunk above her. The rest of her siblings had already risen, the sun lurking just below the horizon. It was a strange feeling for an Apollo kid, that of a sunrise. It was the kind of magnetism you felt toward a pillow when you're tired, or a plate of food when you're hungry. A pull towards something they need.

The blonde rose from her tangled sheets with a muffled groan, wincing when lingering bruises ached. Training seemed to be the only thing getting her through the first few days of summer, campers coming in from the break and swamping her with counselor duties and the presence of the half-mad half-blood in the basement of the Big House.