(This is a submission for a writing contest so I hope you like it!! please enjoy :) And sorry that it only loosely fits the theme/prompt... but I liked the idea of moving on not within life but beyond it)
She was too young.
I can still see her, pale, delicate feet soft on the grass. Wearing her yellow dress. She always wore that dress. When I brought it back from the traders' hub, not too long ago, she took it and wouldn't take it off for a week.
Then I had to wash it. That was when I fell in the river, my one and only glimpse of what happened to her.
Now I stare out at the stones, reliving my terror. I'd tried to cross there, there where the water hits the rocks and smashes upwards in an explosion of white foam. That was where I slipped. Then there was a confusion of white, whirling, and I'd gulped for air before realising it wasn't air I was sucking into my lungs.
Briar – Briar – she'd screamed my name, and I freeze now. I can hear it echoing, her voice raw, guttural.
It's fading.
Panicking, I clutch at the stringy grass, but I can't – can't catch a grip. It tears out of my fingers, and I scrabble, dirt caking my nails. Tiny feet slip in front of me, and I try to catch her.
I miss.
Briar!
Everything – it's all so slow, meaningless greens and blues and the fading yellow of her dress.
I've watched this happen before –
but no I haven't, how can I have? I can't have, not when the terror is so fresh.
Briar, I can't watch you die again –
I open my mouth, and a sound claws its way out of my throat and into the air. It is a demon. My eyes close – no please don't – and then it's gone. Red smoke shimmers in front of me. For a second I wish I forced it to take me.
I could follow Briar. I could follow her, and I could see her and be with her and trace her tiny face and hold her, squeezing her. Pretending I'll never let go.
My sister. My sister, and she was only seven – give her back, I'll do anything. I promise –
but nothing reverses death.
She was never here.
And I'm standing, my feet bare just like hers were when she slipped, that last time. And my eyes are fixed on the stone that rolled out from under her toes. And I'm shivering. The cold seems thicker than the normal ice-bright chill I'm used to... it penetrates. It's not just my toes, my fingers, my face that prick up in gooseflesh. I'm cold all the way through. So cold I can barely breathe.
This was the cold I felt, I realise, when I was drowning. Maybe she felt this cold too, my Briar. She always complained of the cold, and she slept curled up in a lump with blankets piled on top of her.
The differences are few between the time I slipped and the time it happened to her. We both screamed the other's name.
Aspen!
Her voice – it's screaming for me, but it's barely there.
But she ran for our parents. A five-year-old couldn't pull a drowning twelve-year-old out of a river.
Whereas I tried to catch her. And I missed. And it was my fault, all of it.
Her shriek hit my eardrums like an arrow fired into my brain. I turned, laughing, holding my hand out to her. But she was falling – away from me – and I lunged for her. I plunged into the pool on her left. Her head hit the rock, red blossoming about her and staining her mouse-brown hair. Then she slipped down to the right of the stepping stones, and I screamed – "Briar!" But she never heard me.
I blink once, twice. And I rub my arms, and attempt to tease the cold from them. It will be cold enough.
I can hear her voice, but I can't make out the words, apart from one. My name. She's repeating my name, and it's growing clearer.
Maybe it's because I'm getting closer.
She needs her sister to protect her. She's always needed me. I hold her at night when her body is wracked with cold. I hold – I held – I will hold her.
I slip off the bank and down to the very edge, where there's a tiny lip of flat stone. Placing my left foot on the first stone, I pause. I turn back.
I close my eyes for a long second, picturing my mother's face, my father's. Then I picture Briar's.
The walk along the stones to the place where she slipped seems to take forever. At the same time, it takes barely a second.
And this is where I kneel, and I splash water over the stones in front of me. They have to be slippery. It has to be just the same. As I straighten up, fear forces my hands to shake, but I tighten my grip on my pants, and I let my eyelids flicker shut, and I take a blind step forwards.
There is motion, and I feel my feet slip. And I take a breath of air, and then I take a breath of water.
For a pale second, there's blood. There's pain, and I feel fear, more than I ever have before. And then I leave it all behind.
