Page 26 of A Rising Hope

The occasional splashes of tiny drops from above disrupted the smooth glass-like surface. The sound was so harsh against the complete silence in between.

Drip.

Drop.

Drip.

It splashed a few times more than before.

Odd.

Perhaps if I knew how to care, I would have thought more about it.

But I just slept instead.

There werea few more drops today.

I stared at the ripples they created through the flat surface. Perhaps they were larger today, or maybe I was imagining it all. Perhaps they were heavier, stronger. The ripples rocked my consciousness on their waves. The splashing sounds became loud, abrasive, disrupting my peace.

I closed my eyes, trying to sleep. But the droplets didn’t stop, no matter how hard I tried to float away, they followed me. The tiny ripples across the liquid turned into full size waves as thedroplets no longer were the size of raindrops, but rather large heavy boulders, vociferously crashing into the waters.

One of them was falling straight at me. I tried to swim but couldn’t.

I couldn’t do anything but float. The onyx waters didn’t take me anywhere as waves dragged me into a whirlpool, keeping me right in the boulder’s path.

A moment and I’d be underwater.

I should do something. I knew that.

But my thoughts weren’t with me. Plans and ideas were foreign, and instincts nonexistent.

The boulder reached me at last, and the black waters swallowed me whole as I sunk far down deep below the surface.

Intense golden light blinded me.

“What the actual fuck?” The words escaped my lips before I could think twice.

Wait . . . Icanthink.

I could remember.

I could feel.

And in that moment, pain and pure anguish filled my body. I screamed, air like sharp claws tearing at my lungs.

At last, my consciousness slipped away from me once more.

17

FINNLEAH

There were no calm waters this time. No soothing emptiness and lulling ripples.

And though the pain was gone, there was a sound that made my skin crawl with a familiar, terrible feeling.

I recognized that screeching immediately.

I spun around a few times, standing as if in a large gray cloud.

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