remember when she left

FRIGG EVANS

"STRETCH YOUR LEGS or I'll flatten them by myself!"

That lovely scream was Ramira's –Frigg Evans artistic swimming teacher. Of course. Frigg Evans didn't know how exactly they hired artistic swimming coaches, but she was now certain that one of the requirements was being able to yell loud enough to shatter any mirror or window.

Frigg had always been what was popularly recognised as a 'nerd', but if there was something she liked even more than reading, it was swimming. It helped her a lot. There was something out of this world with being submerged by water, it felt like an alien dimension altogether.

Everyone knows that dream, when suddenly you're weightless, you have no importance at all, you're just this light bubble of happiness and peace, and you fly through the air with no worries at all. Then, of course, you would suddenly start waking up, wishing your eyes could just stay closed forever.

Frigg was now a hundred percent positive that the only target in life was to find that feeling of flying in the real, awaken, world. For now, swimming was the closest she had come.

"Can we choose the music for the team routine now?" Bellary whined. She hated theory practises –unfortunately for her, those were the only ones they had in the beginning of the school year, since they hadn't yet started a routine.

"No," Ramira sighed heavily. "I said we weren't doing it today."

Annie joined Bellary's protestations and Frigg couldn't help but smile. The two girls still didn't get the fact that artistic swimming lessons weren't democratic. Ramira gave them a pointed look, which here means she gave them the silent message that if they weren't working on the new figure, they wouldn't even make it until the routine's music.

Artistic swimming had often made the news for having abusive coaches, that force you until your body snaps, and some other terrifying stories. It wasn't the case with Ramira. Sure, she was scary and could be persistent. Some of her trainings –here meaning all of them– were draining and exhausting. But she always knew when to stop, and she was actually nice when you listened to her and did your best.

In addition, it was a good exhausting. The kind that makes you feel like your muscles have disappeared, and that you'll never move again, and yet. It makes you feel like you're alive for the first time. You feel something between pride for managing all of that, and some kind of inner power that wakes every cell of your brain until all you can be is simply, and utterly happy.

So ignoring the sore muscles and closing off the pain, Frigg did the leg boost again, closing her body in a V underwater, her feet grazing the surface, before she flattened her upper body, pushing with her arms, her legs and hips raising over the water. She had just the time to do a split, and close her legs in a twirl.

"Good," smiled Ramira. "Just try to be more energetic. It has to go POW," she explained, mimicking an explosion.

Frigg nodded and did it again a couple times. She knew it would never be perfect. Nothing was ever perfect in her sport. She'd been doing this for ten or eleven years now. It was her own way of relaxing and getting some energy at the same time. Quite paradoxically, nothing exhausted her and revived her more than three hours in this pool.

Since she'd been swimming for so long, the team often changed. Artistic swimming was very demanding. The older and the better you got, the more time and energy it took. She'd known many who just had to stop, for school, or for other reasons. What she knew was that she could never quit. Swimming had become her life.

Right now, her team had been the same for a good two years, actually. There was Bellary and Annie, her two absolute best friends. Rebecca, and two Dellas (one of them they called Della, the other Ella). It was a good thing that they'd been swimming with each other for some time now, the more like a team you felt, the more like a team you swam.