Offering no last glance at the cave where she’d been imprisoned, she simply walked until she reached the edge of her tiny world.
Until a shelf of coastal bedrock dropped away, where the beach bled into the abyss, and there was nothing but the sea and sky. Seafoam hissing at her back, the yawning blackness of the bottomless deep below her.
It was hypnotic, the abyss. A lure that beckoned her to slip under and know what it was to behim.
Salt washed over her lips, flooding her throat and burning chapped lips. Kore plunged beneath the waves, the chill striking her with a slap as ice washed over blistered flesh.
She choked on a gasp. Her throat caught on at the edges of the shock.
Body seizing, muscles locked, lurched toward the surface. Bursting through into the air, she sobbed as she choked.Terrified screams cawing over a ravaged voice, left breathless in the chill, she dipped beneath the surface again.
Only once. Just long enough to see the fathomless black and feel the weight of the deep for what it really was.
Endless.
Her limbs thrashed in an ugly, graceless panic. Legs thrashing. Muscles screaming as agony speared through her bones.
But she didn’t stop.
She kicked again,hard.
Spreading her fingers, an instinct seized her as she clawed toward the surface. The water grew thick in her hands, caught in a grip no longer quite human, she was propelled to the surface with a speed that made her gasp.
The water gave.
Parting around her as she sliced through, gliding as she burst through to the surface. Sucking in a breath that ached and burned at the back of her jaw, Kore blinked the salt from her eyes and kept swimming.
And swimming.
Eyes glassy and fixed to the distant horizon. Where waves crashed against the swollen underbelly of blackened storm clouds.
Swimming, swimming,swimming.
Absent purpose or direction.
One stroke after the next.
She lost track of time. Her body and mind. Everything drifted with the current, caught in the lull of waves and the burn in her shoulders.
There was nothing but the next kick. The next stroke.
She swam through pain and fear.
Not strong or fast. Absent grace or wild, determined purpose.
She simply moved with whatever remained in a dying body until her arms dragged through the water in weakened arcs. Until her jaws sagged on ragged gasps, as the sea flooded her throat and burned her lungs.
One kick.
Another.
Her body moving for nothing but a shred of fragile instinct that commanded survival. Growing weaker with every lurch toward a destination that offered no hope.
No distant sighting of land.
The horizon mocked her. Taunting her with an endless wash of grey turning black. As the sun turned away from her plight, and the night swallowed anything that might’ve once felt like hope.
Fingers aching as she cut through the water, Kore felt the webbing stretch with every stroke.
