Koete ↠ Sokka

Chapter 11: The Boat - Part 1

TW drowning and trauma—multiple instances.

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Dark. Everything around her was engulfed in pitch-black darkness. It wasn't the kind of lulling darkness when you're about to fall asleep either, but a cold and cruel type that made your bones shake beneath your skin. It was cold. So cold. She knew if she could only see herself, her skin would be a pasty white, flushed red from the salt water stinging her face as it crashed up towards her, and cracked lips a diseased blue.

Someone was screaming. Was it her? No, it couldn't be. She was already submerged beneath the surface, watching as she sunk deeper and deeper with her eyes wide open. Lightning briefly illuminated the sky, blurred by the glowing ribbons above her. She tried to make her body move—to kick her legs, wave her arms, anything at all—but her muscles coldly refused. It was like her body was disobeying her mind. No matter how madly her brain screamed to move—she just couldn't.

Her eyes slowly fell shut, and she was on the boat again. But not a boat—a large metal ship, moaning under the weight of her feet. That wasn't right, was it? The face next to her seemed wrong too. Dark brown skin contrasting ice blue eyes.

He wasn't supposed to be there.

She wasn't supposed to be there.

Where was 'there'?

Her brain was confusing her.

Before she could react, the paddle boat she found herself in flipped. Wrong again, drowning again.

For a moment, it was calm under the water.

She was unable to keep holding her breath, lungs screaming for oxygen as the water crushed her chest. She opened her mouth, the last bit of air escaping in bubbles. Salt water rushed in.

It burned.

"Fuck!"

Charlie gasped for breath and twitched violently as she woke up to the force of a weight hitting her stomach before bouncing off. She coughed and hacked uncontrollably, her body contorting itself to the side. Her hair stuck to the sides of her face, her body coated in a light sheen of cold sweat. It felt so vividly real. Arms trembling as they held her up, she felt a hand clasp her shoulder.

Her racing heart lurched at the touch, but she forced her body into staticity as she became more aware of her surroundings. Her eyes darted around as she lifted her face from the hunched position she'd found herself in. It took some time for her confused brain to piece together where she was.

Charlie concluded they were at a beach, residing beneath a small nook created by an overarching rock wall. It was the same place they'd made camp after parting ways with the Zhang and Gan Jin tribes following an entire day of flying north-west, backtracking over Jet's forest to continue on their journey. Not drowning in the ocean, but close enough to it for Charlie to be reminded of how she came to be in this world in the first place.

The longer she lay there listening to the sound of the waves hitting the shore, the more convinced she became that maybe she hadn't gotten over that deep-seeded fear of water she'd gained on arrival to this world. Until now, she'd been able to push it far, far down out of pure necessity. It was inconvenient for her to be afraid of it, so she had simply chosen not to be by a choppy, improvised and not-recommended sort of exposure therapy, but the dawning consequence now seemed to outweigh that temporary benefit of false safety.

As Charlie slowly blinked her eyes, her heart rate finally returned to a normal pace, and she became more aware of the hand on her shoulder—shaking her a little as it tried to remind her it was still there—along with muffled noise. She squinted through the night, only illuminated by the moonlight as the fire had died out during their slumber. As it turned out, there was a figure attached to the hand.