𝕾𝖍𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖉𝖘 - 𝙺𝚊𝚣 𝙱𝚛𝚎𝚔𝚔𝚎𝚛

X

Blue light filters through the clouds. Laughter sounds, vibrating the air in the bright alley. Mira smiles, it's been so long since she's seen her sister.

Two little girls, their forms wavering like looking up from the seabed, chase each other around and around. Wind dances around one and water flows around the other. A voice from the window tells them to be careful.

"You can't catch me!" The wind girl's voice floats through the air. An innocence that Ketterdam will soon drown.

The world around Mira wavers and she's plunged underwater. It shocks her. She can't tell down from up and up from down. Opening her eyes hurts, but she needs to see where the bubbles are going. She finds up and starts kicking and dragging herself towards the surface. The water is fighting her. Something it has only ever done once; and it scares her.

Her head breaks the water and she crawls out of the water onto a rug. Her breath heaves and she presses her forehead to the fibers, trying to gather herself. The colors spin around each other and as she runs her fingers around it, the hope disappears. It's as if the universe gave her something good to lure her in, and now she's trapped like a fly in a spider's web.

The warm light that was her beacon from the water darkens. The air around her chills her wet bones. Despair has made itself known. She looks up and, through the fear, she is hit by a wave of nostalgia. Home.

The amount of games she played here. The lessons her mother gave her. Learning to dance. It all happened here.

Now her sister sits on the couch and cries as her mother comforts her and her father paces.

"Where is he?" Her father yells.

"William! Stop it." Her mother rubs soothing circles on her sister's back. "We need to call the stadwatch and find him."

The 'him'. The person who raped her sister. The beast that would tear her family apart.

"They won't do anything!" He whirls around, running his hand through his thinning hair. "Why would they? One of them could be him."

Mira can't comfort them. They can't see her. They couldn't see her when she was there anyways. She was upstairs in their shared room, already planning how to hurt this man if her father couldn't.

It still hasn't happened. She never figured out who he was. And the tides of the city erase everything. Her sister just became a grain of sand in the city. Insignificant.

The walls collapse around her. She runs forward, trying to protect them from the falling shards of darkness, because she couldn't do it before. Too slow. The ground stops existing and she falls and falls and falls before landing hard. But the pain erases when she sees the terrible scene. Worse because it's real. Or it was, at one point.

Their bathroom. The copper basin. Water stained red. Something Mira has seen--even caused--so many times since, but this one makes her heart stop beating.

Her sister. A discarded kitchen knife. Blood.

She screams and collapses. A little her runs in to see her sister. Both of them were too young for this. Anne had just passed her ninth winter, Mira her tenth.

Little Mira runs over, screaming for their mother. She tries to stop the life from draining. After all, blood is just water, right? But it just keeps slipping out of her hold. It blocks itself from her reach. Not the same. The little one screams again, her voice cracking. She can't help her sister, who's getting paler by the second.

Someone comes in. Freezing hands grab Mira, still on the floor, seeing the scene unfold. Unable to watch the memory any longer, she towards the hands, to cry, for comfort, anything but the sight of her sister dead and little her helpless.

The freezing hands tighten. She looks up. It's Anne, blood streams from her wrists but it isn't warm. It's colder than the water she had tried to save her with.

Her mouth opens in a soundless scream and she turns into salt water that stabs Mira's eyes as it drops, tearing the ground away with it.

She's falling again. Down and down and down until she hits the cold. Her mind shatters into a million pieces as she sinks into the ocean. Unable to make any move. What's the point? Nothing is left for her there.

The sea rises and spits her out on land. A force into her mind. No thoughts, she's too exhausted for that. But impressions of actions.

Water in someone's lungs.

Fear in their eyes.

Bodies piled up.

The forgotten ready to burn.

People in alleys.

Women fighting, defending themselves.

She can't stop now. Someone still has a debt to pay. Death refused her, but she will force it to take her sister's murderer.

Decided, she claws her way back to the land of the waking.

A/N...

Short chapter, I got sidetracked and now my room is covered in cardboard.

We have power! We lost it for a few days but now it's back but i don't think school's canceled tmr *sob*

Anyways, so yeah, some ~trauma~ for you, enjoy this remix of the dictionary

Night, love you, get some sleep, do ur homework (if you have any) <3

-Child