Ocean

It snuffs out the fire of hope and life inside of you as soon as you fall into it. The salt will burn every wound inflicted by the monster that threw you to the mercy of its depths, never letting it heal. So, you try to get out. You can never be sure if your efforts to rise above it are actually working, or if you’re just further dooming yourself to drown, but you try anyway because what else are you meant to do. You find things to float with, but sometimes it just makes you sink further. You try to find steady land but you are always at the tide’s mercy on whether you do. And the tide finds you at your worst moments, the water rising through the floorboards and the dirt, submerging you until you can’t hear or see or think. You might have the luxury a boat in order to master its horizons, but the storms are unforgiving, and it is determined to throw you overboard.Acceptance is a ship.Longing is a guiding light.But these metaphors don’t matter to someone who already drowned. or; the self-indulgent Prequel to the equally self-indulgent “Sunlight” (can be read as a stand-alone fic but please do support “Sunlight” because there are notable call-backs to that fic in this one)