For several seconds, I felt like the world had frozen in place. A thick silence followed the thunderous rumble of the Door closing, and a veil of darkness seemed to cover the sky, as if even the sun had been frightened away by what lurked in here.
Something picked up as I fell, beginning to crash against the flocks of silver fishes, but there was no wind. I felt pinned down by the pressure of the storm. Everything swirled around me. The air had a faint electric charge—I could feel the static in my hair.
Farther below down was the anger waves. I could see them battering against the line of the cliffs, spraying big white clouds of sea foam into the sky.
The image of the falling, spiraling figure was vivid in my numb mind. I was entertained the utter freedom of the fall...I imagined the final ending and the way Shawl’s voice would have sounded in my head—furious, velvet, perfect...the sudden burning in my chest flared agonizingly.
The wind blew stronger now, whipping the waters into me.
“NEWFIISH—FLY—FLY”
FLY? YOU KIDDING ME!
My scream finally found the way out as my body clipped through the open air like a meteor. The wind resisted, trying vainly to fight the unconquerable gravity, pushing against me and twirling me in spirals like rocket crashing to the earth.
“ DAMN IT, DON’T TELL ME, YOU CAN’T DO THAT!”
YES. The word echoed through my head as I sliced through the surface of the water. It was icy, colder than it looked like, and yet the chill only added to the high.
As I plunged deeper into the freezing black water, I hadn’t had one moment of terror—just pure adrenaline. Really, the final ending didn’t catch me.
But the waves fought over me, jerking me back and forth between them as if determined to share by pulling me into halves. There had to be some way to struggle for the shore, yet, the knowledge did me little good when I didn’t know which way the shore was.
The anger water was darker in every direction. There was no brightness to direct me upward. Gravity was all powerful when it competed with the air, but it had nothing on the waves—I couldn’t feel a downward pull, a sinking in any direction. Just the battering of the current that flung me round and round like a rag doll.
I fought to keep my breath in, to keep my lips locked around my last store of oxygen.
“Breathe!” a voice, wild with order, screamed.
The word had not yet sank its meaning into my mind. My ears were flooded with the freezing water; the cold of the water was numbing my arms and legs. I didn’t feel the buffeting so much as before. It was more of just a dizziness now, a helpless spinning in the water.
“Breathe!”
I startled with a choke, looking around the water in confusion, knowing I’d heard a voice. Who’s there.
No one; there’s no one except water.
“Sarya, don’t freak out me.”
It was the voice, strange and...terror. Somehow, I felt a cruel stab of pain, and it was growing more and more intolerable by the second.
“My time is fading already, Sarya. Listen to me, this land is coming to his end. You should leave. Find Moony, Go”
The words echoed in my mind, touched my eardrums—I could hear them. Yet they didn’t sound like they were coming the water, from outside my body. They were literally, in every way, inside my mind.
I forced my arms to continue reaching, my legs to kick harder, trying to get rid of these weird words, though every second I was facing a new direction. The water seemed to be alive and had a fun with me.
“Don’t fight with her, don’t irritate her, she has a short tempt especially in the morning.”
Her? What the hell he was speaking? I let one hand free to put up to his ear, squeezed my eyes shut. It was strange; I couldn’t bring my rational mind to accept what happened. The wave hit me solidly across the chest, slamming into me like an iron bar, and the breath whooshed out of my lungs, escaping in a thick cloud of silver bubbles. Water flooded down my throat, choking and burning. I couldn’t see anything but water everywhere, reaching for my face.
“Breathe—You can do it.”
I could not obey. How could I breathe in the water? The waterfall pouring from my mouth didn’t stop long enough for me to catch a breath. The black, icy water smacked into my back again, and they were felt so...abnormal...something was wrong.
“Don’t fight, obey—” he begged. “there’s no hair anymore...
No hair? How blind you are...Silver spots bloomed across my vision, getting wider and wider, blocking out the light.
The water around me was getting—solid, fluffy, soft...like...a stab of horrible thought rolled across my mind. My struggle froze.
My eyes reluctantly, slowly fell down, and widened.
The water was gone—precisely to say, they became HAIR. AGAIN!
Silver hair...
I probably had hostility with the hair!
The first thought came : Grandma Sea? But soon I denied it.
“Who’s there?” it was another strange voice, full of frustration and anger.
The sound of the crashing waves faded into the glaring, and became a quiet, even whoosh that sounded like it was coming from the inside of my ears...
“A bothering-my-dream little flea.” The icy, coldness in the voice jarred me into a more focused tense.
I realized that I was trapped in the hair. There was no tug of the current on me, the heaving was inside my head. The surface under me was flat and motionless. It felt grainy against my bare arms.
“Hmm? Your face was strange. Who are you?” she hesitated. Her voice was very close, too close to be dangerous.
The quiet whooshing inside my ears was not the waves—it was the air moving in and out of my lungs again. Each breath burned—the passageways were as raw as if I’d scrubbed them out with steel wool. But I was breathing.
Then I was freezing. A thousand sharp, icy beads were striking my face and arms with a sudden pull.
“Who are you? Say it!” I recognized it was a young female ’s voice this time.
It took a minute when a woman’s face blocked out of the silver hair. It was an elegant, delicate, charming face. If it would be the normal size, that would be perfect. Yeah, overhead was a super-size face, so big that I could count each pore, and her hair was just like Grandma Sea’s, but glossier and dense, blocking everything. It was not hard to imagine what was behind them, but I forced myself to hold it off.
“Wow,” she gasped, aversion washing over her features. Her eyes were wet from the water. “You smell terrible.”
“Yours are not g-goo-d.” I stuttered, my lips quivering from the cold.
Her juicy eyes narrowed. Her irises were deep blue around to the edges, darkening until they were silver around the pupil. When she straightened her up, she loosened her hair, revealing the rest part of her feature. She was tall(I should say “towering”), with silver skin and blue eyes. She would have been very pretty—because she was every bit as human as I was except her size and HAIR.
My jaw dropped.
It was not an amazing thing to stare up a giant glowing woman, towering to the sky with blowing silver hair. Not terror, but creepy...and I didn’t know what was it.
“NEWFI—” Kingo’s scream broken into a mutter. “Madam A...”
Though my head was still rolling, I didn’t miss the sudden horror in her voice. The water licked and writhed up my side face as I was pulled up straight to my feet. To my surprise, they became into pearls when they touched the land.
My hands were not free, but it didn’t bother to catch several falling water drops. As what had happened, the liquid drops went to solidification of pearls as my skin kissed them. I shook my head, followed by rain of clattering. My eyes tensed with shock.
“Kingo?” the woman was distracted.
She took one step forward. As I was imagining she might tramp me smash, a shuddering rolled through her feature, and she started to shrink, shrink, shrink until into a normal size. Thank God, I don’t need to look up at her anymore. The sore on the back of my neck was gathering its strength.
Now she looked better. If she could loose her hair to set me free, she would be nice.
“What reason sent you here? Isn’t my honey hanging around for my new sisters? Or...this will be ...”
I blinked, tried to read her expression, squinting into the hammering rain. Her eyes were tight with threatening or pain.
The name that hadn’t made sense before it suddenly did. “You...misunderstood...my lady. She...she is not your...new...” Kingo choked, hardly to swallow the last word. “sister...”
“Really?” she asked, playing her slim fingers. “so could you tell me who is she? A thief?”
“No, no. She’s the—Newfish.”
“Newfish?” a frown crease her delicate forehead. “It is rare to recruit a newfish at this timing. Kingo—” she paused, sinking into deep thought.
I gave a flickering eye change with Kingo, mouthing quietly my confusion: who was this giant beauty? What the meaning of “sister”? Which sounded not...good, and I seemed to be involved in some family predicament with the reason that god might be knowing.
“Aoro.” Suddenly, Kingo’s voice was echoing in my head.
It didn’t scare me that tricky voice sneaked into my head. It seemed I didn’t have my privacy anymore. An urge of needing a lock for my head screamed inside. I wondered, missing part of her explanation.
“She is...daughter of Achelous, owing the power of controlling water, basically her incarnation is Pearl Lake. “ mind-talking paused for one second. “...and one more kind warning, Newfi-, don’t pick the pearl, Aoro hates that. And her husband is—”
She hadn’t time to finish the name as Aoro’s voice broke in. “Are you hiding something?”
A somber mood rested over me as my attention came on the conversation.
“No, madam Aoro...”
“So which palace she is in? And what’s wrong with this..ugly style of her clothe? I knew the ROAL Garment Department is degenerating for while, but it is far to my imagine. Look at shell fabric, so coarse, smelly and this silly pattern...what’s that mean?”
Blah, blah, blah, blah...I had finally had enough. I couldn’t stay silent another second to let her comment a modern style.
“Excuse me, can I say something now?” I asked, frustration raising the volume of my voice. “I am sick of you girls talking about me like I am not here.”
Aoro gazed at me carefully, and prodded her jaw.
I quickly gathered my thoughts, grasping for the right words inside the swirling cloud of frustration, confusion and anger in my mind. “ I am sorry my style didn’t entertain you, but I don’t care” A suck of exhale beside me made me hesitate, but I ignore Kingo’s warning eyes. “It is wrong to bother your dream, I didn’t mean it, really, I just in a hurry...to find Fox!”
“Fox?”she repeated name, then turned her misty eyes toward me, and the smile brightened—became ecstatic. “It’s been a long time not to hear that. Interesting.” she rejoiced, turned to her slim escort. “Kingo, be a dear and send this new to Shang-lo. I’m sure my brothers wouldn’t want to miss such interesting newbie.”
“Yes, Madam.” Kingo glanced up quickly at me, and nodded.
Aoro didn’t missed and supplement. “By the way, Momokie is one of my law-brother.”