STARLIGHT | krmy ✓

17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN —
                     DROWN.

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SHE HAD NEVER felt pain quite like this; standing the darkness, powerless to the forces that imprison her heart and mind, merely watching herself spiral deeper and deeper. When would she ever reach the bottom? When would she leave this endless cycle?

She reaches out into nothing, hoping to grasp something, anything, that could help her stay grounded. The ache that filled her chest was consuming her and replacing it with emptiness. She wanted it to stop. She wanted it all to stop.

Where...where...

Claudine. Her name rang clear in her head. Claudine, her star. Where was she?

"Claudine!" Her voice cracks, but still, she keeps calling, calling, and calling, even when her throat feels scratchy and dry. No, she had to keep calling for her. Surely, she will answer.

She had to. But all Maya saw was darkness.

She was the only person capable of saving her from this void. Maya's drowning, choking on the emptiness filling her chest, lungs, heart.

Someone, save me. Claudine. Claudine. Claudine, where are you?

Everything crashes down on her shoulders, forcing her to her hands and knees, and Maya chokes back a cry, the pressure sending her head to the ground as well, and her body trembles with the effort of keeping her sturdy.

"Clau...dine..." Maya groans in pain, clenching her fists, trying her best to resist the crushing weight that was threatening her limbs to give way. No. No. She had to escape. She didn't want to be here anymore. She was here for too long.

One of her legs was sinking into the ground like it was quicksand, and Maya yells out in defiance, now concentrating all her strength on her arms and upper body to resist. She didn't know how long she could last.

"Failure."

"I just can't seem to remember her name. Her face."

"You have to be perfect."

No. No. No. No. Maya grits her teeth, pushing back against it with all she could manage. She won't lose to it.

"Please stop blaming yourself anymore."

"And...it shall be...bestowed upon you..." Maya recites like a mantra through a clenched jaw, looking up at the light penetrating the darkness above. Just a little...farther. She could feel it. She could reach it.

"....the Star which you have longed for...!"

Maya jolts awake, gasping for air. She massages her leg, where it had genuinely felt like a vice-like grip had been trying to pull her under the surface. Drowning her.

Claudine.

Maya turns to check on her, and was relieved to see her sleeping soundly. But when she moves closer, she could see and hear how laboured her breathing was, the beads of sweat on her furrowed brows, and the quiet, strangled moans leaving her trembling lips.