Quicksand

Solid ground, she prayed. Solid ground was all she wanted.

The storm raged around her mom's little car. It roared around her, breaking her, smashing her to pieces, and rock was all she wanted. She was in the car, but she was also outside, stumbling through the marsh--or was it lava? She couldn't tell through the fog.

She cried.

"Tell me," her mother demanded. By then, she was used to snaps, yells, icy eyes devoid of pity. She was the child. What choice did she have?

She was girl on the ground, but she was also a fish in the water. She lunged for the worm like a starving animal, like her life depended on it, and it did. She reached out, out, out. This could be her bitter-tasting cure, her painful salvation. Tell me. An order, but also an attempt at comfort. An attempt at understanding. This was her mother; her mother could help her. Her mother wanted to help her.

The words spilled from her mouth as she slowly put her weight on the dirt. Ground, ground, ground. Was this finally rock? She stopped for shuddering breaths, but her mother demanded faster, shoving the sweetness down her throat. What did it matter? Perhaps this ground was solid.

Her feelings, so sensitive, so soft. She poured them out, poured out a part of herself, building her shelter on this ground. Leaning on it, depending on it. Ignore the line, she told herself. Ignore the fishing rod.

Her mother opened her mouth.

The lightning almost hit the car. The rock under her crumbled, and her scream was a beautiful streak of ink. Its chromatography was a real rainbow, it was pain, anger, anguish. There was no tinge of fear. Selfish. Spoiled.

The storm held no sympathy.

She had known. She had known it was quicksand, had known the lifeline was bait. She had known, and she had taken it anyway. You cannot learn. Perhaps that was true.

She usually screamed with fear, she realized. Where had that gone?

The car window was a mirror. In it, she saw a girl, shivering and dependent, a girl she knew so well, yet not at all. She saw a girl crying, a panic attack seizing her. The girl writhed on the ground, shaking with uncontrollable noises, as her mother watched, cold. She saw a girl excited, giving her mother a present she had worked so hard on only to be brushed off. She saw a girl shining with devastation, her enthusiasm and a piece of her heart thrown on the floor, shattered. So fragile. So delicate.

Bubbles popped. Disappeared. Trust, perhaps. But also dependence. Cowardice.

She fought the quicksand. The rain was frigid, the rain was life and truth and the way the world worked. The car was not a sanctuary, it was a trap. Right now, she was but a rabbit.

She could be a bear.

I will survive this, she thought. She would learn someday.