Until Forever (1st draft)

Part the Second

Geneva Maxwell was flying.

She was weightless, floating, adrift like a balloon in a gentle breeze. Was she falling? Rising? She seemed to be spinning very slowly, but she couldn't tell which way was up and which was down.

The first thing she had noticed was the warmth. She had been cold, brutally cold, as if frozen solid. So cold that her body was in agony and she wanted to scream, but her muscles were numb from the frigid temperature and she found herself unable to move or speak. Her body became heavy, stiff, suspended in solidifying space.

But then she felt the warmth. It came slowly at first, like the rising presence of the morning sun. Her body began tingling, reminding her of that strange feeling when her arm or leg would fall asleep. The warmth seeped into her, causing her stiffened muscles to relax, releasing the grimace that made the skin taut on her face. She felt her jaw go slack, unclenching her grinding teeth, and realized that her fingers and toes were flexing.

It felt as if somebody was giving her a transfusion of heated blood. In her mind she could trace the progress of the warmth as it spread through her body, moving much quicker now, gaining momentum until it rushed to her head and flushed her face as if she were gazing up at the sun on a blazing summer day.

Her eyes popped open and she realized that there was a bright light in the distance, beaming at her through a murky haze. Was it a haze? Maybe it was fog? No, it was thicker, and it was...wet.

And then she suddenly realized where she was.

She wasn't flying. She wasn't drifting like a balloon. She was floating in liquid! She was underwater, bobbing in the currents.

Geneva panicked and gasped, sucking in water. It burned in her chest, making her feel full to the point of bursting. She remembered gulping an entire can of soda once on a dare. Immediately afterwards, she had felt like she was going to die from the pressure in her chest. This felt very similar, only much worse. Her eyes widened in panic, her heart seemed to stop for a moment, but somehow she stopped the rush of water entering her body and regained her composure.

Her eyes found the bright light again and she began swimming desperately towards it. The water was dark as midnight blue ink, nothing like the clear water in the pool at her apartment building. And the mysterious light shone like a star through the dark blue, a blazing beacon that she couldn't resist.

Faster and faster she swam, cursing herself for quitting the swimming lessons her mother had insisted on. Her arms and legs flailed in the water, far too much effort for far too little progress. She felt like a little moth flying in a windstorm, struggling to reach the sole star in the night sky.
The pain in her chest grew from a tight knot into a crushing weight that was suffocating her. If she didn't release the water within her soon, if she didn't breathe precious air into her lungs in the next second, she would have to stop and die. And she would welcome that. The pain and the panic and the desperation were that intense.

So when the moment came---when she realized that this was the end and she had nothing left to give---she made one last desperate lunge for the star.

And suddenly she was rising from the water, staggering on her feet toward shore. She gagged and choked and vomited as she went, and she fell more than once. Each time she rose again, delirious but determined, until finally she found herself standing on the rocky shore beneath the peeking light of a rising sun. She swayed on her feet, fighting back the lure of unconsciousness, as a small figure emerged from bushes nearby. Her vision was too blurred to see the person clearly. Was it a child?

"The...light," she stammered. "Where...did it...go?"

"Light?" asked the figure in a very strange voice that sounded more like an arrangement of musical notes.

"I saw...a light," Geneva persisted. "It looked like...a star."

"Oh," replied the figure. "I have a star in my heart."

And then Geneva collapsed to the ground, surrendering at last to the welcome oblivion of unconsciousness.