Solira: The Ocean: i know you're BROKEN;

Seeking, seeking.. darkness and light fought over me, flickering, angry, distracting, wrong. Everything was a blur. My heart stuttered, spasmed, clenched, released, went back to beating angrily, a too-fast staccato. Fear jetted through me, my electricity chasing it, burning through me, singing my nerves. Pain, long forgotten, still pulsed. My eyes were wide, breathing choked, rushed, thick. My legs pounded, ripped open little gouges in the earth where they hit and pulled and threw me forward, launching me through trees, over the rocky shore.

Eventually, as I often had lately, I ended in the ocean of Solira. The difference this time is that I didn't stop, didn't even slow. Through the water, my body lurched and kept going, salt biting into the wounds that branches and vines and earthen shrapnel had caused. Everything was moving against me, everything. Lightning broke across the sky, rain still pouring, rinsing me, absolving me..

Eating my soul.

Something living and strange bumped my legs, and I knew trouble lurked. Panicked, I tried to turn back, to get a drip on the ground and retreat.. but it was too late. I'd gone too far. I was swimming, the ground far below me, lost to me. There was nothing to do but drown.

Calm, then, washed over me. What had I to fear from death? I had already died once, for Hymn. I had already betrayed Lilium, giving up my mortality to join the dead girl.. but then she'd left me, and Lilium had come here. What could I have done but follow? Now I'd betrayed her again. Ozymandias was gone - and soon, so too would I be gone.

And then I stumbled, tumbling face-first over a fallen log. It was not raining, there was no storm. Everything was calm, except me careening at full-speed through the trees and then launching over this log. More pain ripped through me, and I allowed for a sob.

Still, though, everything was eerily quiet. I heard the blood pounding in my body, my jagged breathing. It was night, and no longer was I seeing flashes of light and dark. Nothing was chasing me. I was not drowning in the ocean.

I was utterly alone..

But there she was, my demon, my lover, my bane. She stood out on the shore, alone, prideful, broken. Her form was misshapen, but her color was true.

Like the leach I was, I could not help but go to her. It was a cold, chilly night, but I was soaked, shivering, broken. My ribs stabbed through my skin (which was sliced to bits and bleeding). My eyes were crazed, wide. Still, I went to her. And though disgust rippled across my obnoxiously open features (she could read me, even when others could not see the subtle shifting of eyes, lips, tone.. she would find me open), though I hated her with every ounce of my being..

This was her, and she still owned some part of me.

Everything is decaying. I paused only long enough to take in her gorgeous, destroyed face. I was born in a desert. Not Solira, Enipeus, Phlegethon. Ni'Srilan..

I couldn't even finish, my voice choked up, broke. Anger flashed across every nuance of my being, my lip curled.

Come with me or don't.

Its the best I could do, and I'd stayed near her too long already. I wanted too badly to press against her, know her, breath with her. I wanted to absorb her, to soothe her, to smell her..

Before I broke down further, I simply turned and left, letting the night swallow me whole.