The Lovers Card

Chapter 1 - The Ocean

Elias shivered as he felt the cold salt water brush up against his legs, soaking into his trousers. His body tensed, digging his fingers into the sand below him. This must have been the third night that week that Elias found himself sitting upon the ocean's shore. He watched as the soft waves collapsed into the ocean surface, before soon reforming once again. He found the cycle somewhat hypnotic, as if the waves were beckoning him deeper. Sighing as he gazed at the dark water in front of him, he watched as the fictitious fog that surrounded his mind slowly evaporated. He wondered why he had become so somnambulant in the last few weeks — living like a spirit unable to pass over. He fiddled with a shell that had flown into his hand, thinking that perhaps the fact his childhood had been so chaos-filled made it difficult for him to adjust to the feeling of peacefulness. The fact that he no longer lived in fear was a wonderful thing, he thought, however living without fear felt as if he wasn't living at all. Living in that wretched home, he was in a constant state of hyper-awareness. Every sudden footstep he heard got his heart thumping, and every choice he made had to be thought through to extensive amounts. He constantly obsessed over his surroundings, and relished in the unfamiliar feeling of tranquility.

Having traveled so far away from his childhood home, he experienced more tranquility than he could have ever imagined. The absence of conflict in his life had finally given him time to breathe, time to think. Time to consider his life as a whole, and the meaning of it all. Unfortunately, the majority of this time was spent thinking about his past. When he and his brother, Finn Aukland, had finally raised enough money to leave their hometown, it was the most wonderful feeling imaginable. He had constantly fantasized about leaving, finally being able to speak his mind without the painful endurance of his grandmother's wrath. He and Finn traveled to a much farther town by the name of Merton, which they still reside to this day. It wasn't until the third month in Merton that Elias realized the mental plague he contracted from his old home could never be cured. It didn't matter how far he traveled. The memories, the panic, the nightmares, they would never leave. Even worse, he had begun dissecting himself, attempting to understand why he deserved to be treated so poorly. The symptoms of his mind became too much for Elias, and unless he found some way to distract himself, they would eat away at him. Slowly, Elias allowed himself to enter a dissociative, almost vegetative state of mind. Not thinking at all would mean he didn't have to think about his grandmother, he didn't have to think about the parts of himself that she forced him to hide.

Elias found this situation ideal, at first. After a few years of living in this empty state, he realized that the meaningless of his life was suffocating him. His sense of self had completely escaped him. Every choice he made had been given half a thought, as the other half was somewhere unreachable. In the ocean, perhaps. Maybe that's why Elias had been so obsessed with it. The icy cold evening water sent a shock through his body, waking him up. It forced his thoughts back into his mind, his brain back into his body. The water rose upon the shore, submerging the lower half of Elias's legs, before pulling back into itself. Elias lied back and closed his eyes. He exhaled as the water trickled up his body, before slowly slipping away. Only this time, Elias was swept into the ocean with it. He felt his body being dragged into the mass of the ocean, rocking back and forth as the waves splashed beneath him. He floated on the ocean's surface, letting it pull him further away from the shore.

Only moments later, he felt his body slowly submerge into the cold water, as if being pulled down by a fictitious weight. Logically, he should have been thoroughly panicked at this point, but for some reason he didn't feel like it. He didn't have the energy to be afraid, in fact, he was glad to be submerged. It was like the oxygen that surrounded him on land was tainted, infected by some imaginary force, and he could only escape it by staying in the water. He soon landed on the ocean floor. The water that enveloped him felt unusual. He could not breathe, but he did not feel the need to. He opened his eyes and sat up off the ocean floor. By now he knew something was incorrect, as his eyes were not stung by the salinity of the water. Though he did not have any desire to, he attempted to swim up to the surface, to see if he was capable — the ocean surface was not very far from him, as he was still in a shallow area of water. His feet hit the sand once again, as if gravity had pulled him down. He curled up on the ocean floor, unsure of what to do at this point.