Bubbles

Chapter 4

The girl had never experienced pain.

Her body was not made to sting, not built to bleed, not created to feel.

She was like Ocean – never changed, never hurt, never fazed, never destroyed.

But Air didn't seem to know that.

Raging, horrible pain lashed at her fingertips. It burned like fire, cut like a knife, stung like a whip. It hurt as though every inch of her fingertip was being minced into tiny pieces – ripped to shreds. No pain could ever have compared.

If she could have, the girl would have been frightened. She would have screamed and thrashed and her heart would have raced. But she could not. She could not be afraid.

However, she knew want. She understood that. She knew that she wanted to be with the sky, but she also knew that she did not want to feel the pain anymore. She knew it with every fiber of her being.

She yanked her hand back beneath the waves. The pain instantly stopped. No burn, no ache, no nothing.

The girl studied her hand. It was clear. The pain hadn't changed her skin, and yet she was so changed. She knew, deep down, that if the rest of her went into that place, she would not exist anymore. She would be as gone as the fish, snapped between the jaws of a shark. She was the fish – Air was the shark.

But the girl could not be disheartened. She could not be disheartened, and so she continued to want. She was determined to get that want. It was all she had left.

So, she tried. She thought and considered and hypothesized, but the only way to really know if something worked or not was to touch above the waves. And so, with no fear burdening her, she did that. Her fingertips screamed with pain again and again and again, until the girl yanked her hand – this time covered in seaweed – beneath the rippling blue ceiling and stopped.

She stopped moving, stopped swimming. She simply allowed herself to fall, slowly, through the waves.

She was being forced to accept the inevitable. Because it was inevitable, she realized.

She would never swim among the clouds, dance through the sunset. She would never hold the stars. Her precious bubbles in the dark.

She was empty once again – the want hadn't left, but she no longer believed it was achievable. It was broken, gone. The pieces were sharp, as if they were made of glass.

And the girl learned sadness.

She looked up at the sky, the only thing she ever wanted. She would never be able to be with it. Never. Never.

Never.

Her heart ached. Her throat felt tight. Her eyes stung. She was breaking apart at the seams.

She began to cry as she sank. The girl had never cried before. She didn't know what it was. Didn't understand what was happening. But she couldn't be afraid, all she could do was cry and want and hurt. She was ripping herself into pieces. She would have gladly ripped herself to pieces with Air if she could have stopped the pain. Everything hurt.

She landed, softly, on the sandy ocean floor. She looked at the blue, rippling top of Ocean. Her home. Her world. The place she wanted to be rid of so desperately. The place she wanted to stay with forever.

Why? Why did nothing make sense? Sadness clawed at her heart as she sobbed.

She broke, and she wished, and she cried.