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“We’ll drown,” Mollie snapped. “Yes, I’m aware.”
“Well, what the hell are we going to do?!” Rachel shouted. “I can’t…we can’t just stand here and die!”
“Shut up and let me think!”
“We don’t have time to think! We have to run.”
“Run to where?”
“I don’t fucking know, but—”
“Quiet, Rach. Your screeching is not helping—”
“Screeching? We’re running out of time, and you’re telling me to calm down?!”
“Perhaps the caves won’t fill completely,” Mollie mused aloud. “We could swim—”
“Swim?” Rachel’s voice turned brittle with horror. “That’s your plan? You study the damn universe, and the best you can come up with is—”
I shut them out.
I couldn’t listen.
Their energy fed into mine, braiding our panic into a living, gnawing thing. My lungs threatened to stop working. Every fear, every terror, every horror, pain, despair, and loss strangled me like a monster.
My ears rang as they fought.
My arms ached as I held Peter.
I was so, so close to snapping.
So…I did the only thing I could.
I pressed my toes against cold stone.
I ignored the rapidly rising water level as it kissed my calves and travelled higher, higher, higher.
I begged that quiet, wiser part of my soul to take charge.
Images of us swimming and clawing at the ceiling as the ocean suffocated us played behind my closed eyes. Nightmares of us taking our last breath without ever seeing the sun again.
Focus.
I ordered every muscle to relax.
I went against every instinct and compelled my nervous system to choose calmness instead of adrenaline.
For a few moments, nothing happened.
The cave bounced Rachel and Mollie’s argument like a megaphone.
But slowly…thankfully…
My attention turned inward.
Light and sanctity, I found a pocket of peace.
I wasn’t this form.
