Drothiker

She was still drowning in the darkness.

But this agony … this was new, obliterating all the same. It was like there was nothing inside her. No warmth, no emotion.

No life.

It was surviving while being dead.

She was being sucked at—her memories and horrors were being fed at, delighted in.

Yet she could not move—this once, she could not cling to the thread of life, as she had when she’d been in that unearthly form.

She was slowly forgetting her name, her being. Slowly forgetting everything that shaped her. She searched for her mother’s voice somewhere inside her, searched for any tether that might aid her out of this haze.

But there was nothing, only a whisper of breathing in her, a touch of life.

Indistinctly, so indistinctly that calling it a whisper would be an exaggeration, a voice seemed to ring from a different world, a different existence.

You say you have an ounce of life left in you, then take that kernel and build it anew. Allow it to grow and thrive.

She dug deep, deep, deep into herself, spiraled down into this abyss, in the hunt for that kernel, that bright, blazing seed to sow.

But something hit her hard.