"She woke up alone, barefoot on a beach, not knowing anything about herself, and stumbled her way through the dark to the nearest building with its lights on. And that place happened to be here, with you, along the shores outside of Cornwall... at S...
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♞♘obliviate♘♞
"she woke up alone, barefoot on a beach, not knowing anything about herself, and stumbled her way through the dark to the nearest building with its lights on. And that place happened to be here, with you, along the shores of Cornwall... at Shell Cottage."
The waves crashed against her skin before she woke. They consumed her body, washing over her legs and drowning her vacant, lifeless face like she were a glass doll in the bathwater of a little girl. She was not dead, but she certainly was not in the state of living where the air in her lungs was winning. She was sitting on the ledge of the fence that separated the world of the living from the world of the dead, waiting to topple, to capsize, and to remain face down in the damp sand.
Her senses were not fully equipped to work during her state of dormancy. She could not see as the waves engulfed her body, and she could not hear as the current whipped in the wind, and she could not feel the tingling of the water against her skin. She certainly could not smell the sodium scent licking at her tongue, filling the cavity of her mouth like she were a vase to plant flowers from. The girl was as good as dead, though she was not dead. She was not dead at all.
It was the feeling of the foamy salt water coating her bare arms that was the first sign of consciousness. It felt like a million spiders were crawling up her triceps, itching to get under her skin. This, she felt. It wasn't the tugging of seaweed wrapped tight around her ankle that she could feel, or the stinging of salt seeping under her eyelids. She couldn't feel her lungs filling with water, threatening to cease oxygen flow, or her clothes weighing wet against her body. The first thing she felt was, in fact, the foamy salt water coating her bare arms.
It sparked a cognitive reaction in the girl, who up until now, was lying prone in the water like a corpse in its casket. The air filled her lungs, swirling with the water inside of her, mixing like a melody, and breathed into her new life. She gasped, spluttering water up, and then her eyes flew open.
Suddenly, she could feel everything: the prickling of sea plants beneath her back and against her skin, the salt stinging the green in her irises, the tightening of the string of seaweed against her ankle. And just as these sensations began to occur to her, her body sprang upright and intense panic set in. She tried to swim away, chest heaving as her arms flailed, but she could not waft her way through the water. She was held down by some force, some chain, that kept her where she was. She grew anxious, even more so than she already was, searching frantically, vociferously, for a way out. When she realized she was tied at the ankle, her fingers, curled and cramped from what felt like centuries of disuse, pulled immediately at the seaweed at the bottom of her leg, tugging desperately at its grip. She was losing oxygen, the whites of her eyes were turning red. What felt like a fruitful action, was becoming more and more vain the longer she attempted to unravel herself. It would be better to let go and let the water fill her chest, warm her organs, and sink her low.
She was grappling with the seaweed, urgency tapping at her pulse, when a wave above head pushed her body backwards. She wanted to scream as she swayed relentlessly with the current. She wanted to cry as her fingers were forced to unlatch from the green vine clutching her limb.
That was when she began to see black. At first it was simple black spots that dotted her eyes, splotches of ink marking a page. The deep darkness of the water grew less blue and more grey each time the spots appeared, her throat straining, choking. It was like she was going to throw up, to vomit everywhere. She felt like she could reach into her throat and pull out a magician's string of scarves.
The waves continued to surge against her, violently swinging her body around beneath the surface. Even if she wanted to, she couldn't detach herself from the seaweed. The pressure and motion of the calamity that was the waves wouldn't allow her to meet the desire of her own hand. She was an object subjected to the grasp of the ocean now, the glass doll forced underwater by an omnipotent hand, and as the foam of the salt water coated her skin, eyes open to the world beneath land, the white that she'd seen for the first time in Lord knows how long was turning black, completely and entirely black.
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DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO EITHER THE HARRY POTTER BOOK SERIES OR MOVIE FRANCHISE, OR ANY OF THE CHARACTERS PERTAINING TO THE HARRY POTTER DIEGESIS. THIS IS A WORK OF FANFICTION, AND THE ORIGINAL STORYLINE, DIALOGUE, AND CHARACTERS OF HARRY POTTER HAVE BEEN ADAPTED TO FIT THE CHARACTERS I HAVE INTEGRATED INTO THE PLOT.
