Time & Tide - Original Wattpad Version

Chapter One: In Which Jessie Falls From The Sky

The only thing I could hear was white noise – leftover static from the hissing shriek of tearing metal, or the throbbing deep call of the bottom of the ocean?

Does it actually matter?

The tug yanked at my whole arm and my three other fingers reflexively curled and held on. The world got blurry. I was zipping past the shadows now, up, up to somewhere where the water shaded from black to blue, then turquoise, then the ridiculously photoshopped teal of all the best travel brochures.

The shadow I held onto was desperately yellow and plastic.

And then all I could seem to worry about was getting decompression sickness.

Silly girl.

* * *

I woke again when my head hit planking.

I coughed, gagged, coughed. I couldn't get in air. Air! My lungs burned and felt so wet all at once. Cold, fuck, cold. I turned my head and puked; sea water and fear and lousy in-flight beer.

"Here now," someone said, and I was swirling, twisting, falling head first again, and something hard against my stomach. And hands. My body halted abruptly. I let out the air I had so hard won in another hacking gag and puked again, vile and bitter and slimy. I coughed until I tasted only stomach acid, sucked in great hungry lungfuls in reedy gasps. It was like breathing through a straw. I gagged until I tasted the blood again, real and too chilly, and too damn cold to be coming out of a living body.

My fingers scratched against a lacquered surface, gouging at a smoothed wood rail slick with polish. I felt splinters go up under my nails. The ring and pinky fingers of my right hand burned and moved in disgusting, painful, eerie ways. There was a floor under my feet, wooden and scuffed, but it wouldn't stop shifting from side to side.

Something warm and dry dropped over my back, tucked in, and scrubbed at my hair. The friction caused delicious warmth and agonizing sensation against my scalp. Sensations chased each other down my spine but I couldn't tell if they were pleasure, or pain, or just feeling, jesus, feeling.

Alive!

I was heaving still, but nothing more came out. Nothing but a long, high keening sound that I realized, slowly, was bubbling up as surely as any empty lifejacket.

Somebody had died.

Somebody hadn't tied on their life-vest properly, had slipped out the bottom, falling down, down, down, and the vest had gone up, up, up, and me, lucky, stupid me, had gotten tangled.

Someone was dead.

And I was not.

I said it out loud, around the blood, the puke, the acid, the salt, the terror: "I'm alive."

"You most definitely are, my dear," said the voice by my ear.

I turned into it, hot and breathing, and here. Human. Large, square hands, burning with life, life, ran down my back, over the nape of my neck, the goose pimpled skin under my ear. I folded my arms in, wrapped my good hand around my broken fingers and sobbed and shook. So fucking cold.

"M-my f-fingers," I said, but what I meant was, What the fuck just happened? and How can this be real? and Why me? And I hurt.

The pain was unreal. I'd never broken anything before in my life. His warm hand, a touch on my own hand, and that was all I could take. It was too much, too much. Being awake, being aware, existing...

It hurt.

I felt the darkness, crushing and cold as the bottom of the sea, and I fell in head first again, topsy-turvy, and let consciousness decide when it was time to bubble back to the surface.