Mr. Blue (Namelessshipping)

Chapter 4: Eleven Days

Past me in a different fanfiction: "Since a lot of people seem to not have noticed yet, I thought I'd mention here that my stories now have an update schedule. Yes, I know. It's amazing. There will actually be regular updates-"

Present me: "Ahahahahaha! Aww, look how cute she is. She thinks she has time for regularly scheduled updates. Well, I got news for you..." *Pushes past me off a cliff* -_- "ain't nobody got time for that. Anyways, I'm still sorry about giving false hope to that one person I told that I would update this tomorrow and tomorrow turned into...almost the next week, and..." *Giggles only slightly satanically* "I hope you guys remember that this is a mature fanfiction full of...mature things. Yeah...Yeah, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it..." *Walks away, giggling creepily to herself*

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A pristine, white arm floats above black waters, lapped at occasionally by small, gentle waves. The image expands, zooms out, and three other limbs float with it. Two arms...Two legs...The water moves with a gentle current, and the limbs are buoyed by it. They rise. They fall. They are cradled by it, held afloat. They are rocked. A Yanma zips above the surface in full, searing, sinister color, hovers for a moment just above the smallest ripples of the most gentle waves, and then zips along on its way again. Its wings flutter—they beat—buzzing just as a fly buzzes, circling a bloated carcass. The sound of the wings fade as the beast leaves. The sound fades—silence—and the limbs are rocked up with a wave, cresting with the water...and gently descend again.

A red tentacle peeks above the surface, then, and rises, climbing the midsection of the body in the water with the suckers on its underside that pulsate and seem to kiss the flesh. The tentacle pulls down, its hold on the torso secure, and the red shape of it slowly eases away into the depths. The four white limbs rise up for a moment or two, resisting the sinking, pushed up by the downward force, held afloat by the water...and then slip beneath the surface. The liquid trickles up. It trickles up the wrists and the ankles, surrounding them, transparent bracelets, wet manacles. The liquid trickles up the fingers, trickles up the toes.

The surface is clear. The gentle swell of a wave passes. Silence.

Utter tranquility above.

Somewhere below, the water rushes down a throat.

Yellow wakes with a start, gasping for air like the sinking feeling in her stomach is because she is already full up of water—she's swallowed a lake, inhaled it, her throat bubbles with waves, and she's drowned.

She has dreamt of drowning while her arm stretches out over the edge of the Pidgeot's nest and balances there above the chasm of space between her and the forest floor. A strong breeze sways the branches of the tall tree holding her up, and the nest rocks like the limbs on the waves.

Yellow's breathing slows, and then she stops it. Slowly, she turns over onto her stomach and looks down...at the nearest row of branches, and the next nearest, and the next row, and the next, and the layers after layers of them, the leaves all rustling through clean air, and if you look a little past them, look down, ignore the tree, there's just a plummet.

Another gasp moves through Yellow, and she rears back, throws herself back onto her ass and the heels of her palms. The straw and the twigs of the nest dig into the tender flesh, and she scrambles back, panting shallowly, breathing but not seeming to breathe for breathing's sake. Perhaps in her mind, she is screaming. Just screaming. She drowns. She falls to her death. She screams. What is dreamt? What is real? What is imagined? What is fate? The scenarios play on loop in her startled brain.