1749
England
"My dear girl, just look up. Feel the sunshine on your face, it is truly a healing remedy." Nanny Margaret, the feeble yet determined, looked upon her charge with pity etched into her fine wrinkles.
The sun was shining brightly, seagulls cawed in the sky above them and the wind nipped playfully along the sand of the empty beach.
Still, the lovely girl remained fixated on her hands in her lap as she sat on the spread out blanket on the sand. Her skirts billowed around her bent knees. Her long, brown locks blew gently around her face as she clasped her hands tightly, refusing to look up at the endless void before her.
"I want to go back inside." She muttered quietly.
She did not care for it. She already knew what it looked like; a great, barren void of nothingness.
She heard the exasperated sigh from her nanny, yet she could care less. In all her fourteen years of life, she had become quite familiar with the sound.
"Victoria...Victoria Hallewell." Her Nanny prodded. Victoria looked up at the old woman, leaning against her cane.
"This is not a death sentence. This is a health excursion that will do you much good." She chided.
"How is being out here in the country, in the middle of no where, supposed to be good for my health, Margaret? I want to be back in London, in my room. I hate it here! There's nothing to do." Victoria balled her thin hands into fists with how frustrated she was.
One moment, she was completely fine remaining in her room, seeing the doctor on a daily basis, then being able to rest in her solitude the rest of each day with her paints and water colors.
She had grown accustomed to her sheltered life.
Nanny Margaret stared piteously at her dearest little charge, the girl she could easily call her own granddaughter by how close their relationship was.
"You know that your father has only your best interests at heart, my dear. He only wants to see you get better."
"No. Father does not want to see me at all." She snapped back. How could he? Her father was in the height of society, too busy attending to his shipping company and mistresses to ever look upon his sickly daughter. She was a smudge across his once, perfectly honed canvas.
This move to the countryside was dedicated to the upmost wish that she would magically get better, weakened no more by her frail body and sickly state. She laughed at the notion. After her mother had passed away in her sickbed, he cast aside the entire father act and carted her off, far away enough from London society to avoid any further embaressment to his austere reputation.
"The ocean holds many secrets, my dear. If you would only give it a chance." Nanny Margaret sighed and turned to look upon the vast horizon of pristine blue water, the white, foamy waves that continously lapped against the shore.
Victoria frowned and followed her gaze. She sucked in her breath. There, mere feet away from her, a glimmer of silver flashed within the rolling waves.
"Did you see that?" She asked Nanny Margaret, keeping her eyes locked on the spot.
"Hmm?" Her nanny mumbled.
"There, in the water...I thought I saw a fish," Victoria said with piqued curiosity, "Nanny, where's my sketchpad?" She turned and looked at Margaret with urgency.
With a faint grunt and the telltale sounds of Nanny's old boots shuffiling around, Victoria shot out her hand to recieve the sketchpad whilst never taking her eyes off the alluring creature hovering in the waves.
The tail was long, willowy, gently ebbing back and forth. So lovely were the colors glistening from the sight, Victoria did not even notice the obsidion orbs staring directly back at her.
"What do you think it is?" She asked Margaret without raising her head from her drawing. The pencil scraped across the parchment paper with quick scratching sounds.
"In truth, my dear, I do not have the faintest idea...perhaps a minnow." She replied in a long sigh as she scooted down onto the blanket and settled in for what she knew would be quite a long while as her young charge drew away.
Nanny Margaret grabbed her bonnet and pulled it further over her face to sheild from the sun as she closed her eyes and enjoyed the feel of the wind against her weathered cheeks.
"No, no it's much too large for that." Victoria answered after a few moments of silence and scribbiling. Margaret hurrumphed in her lounging spot and ignored the girl's commentary.
All at once, the peace and quiet was instantly broken by the sounds of a loud splash.
Shrieking from surprise, Victoria fell backwards from where she was haunched over as a gust of salty, sea water sprayed onto her face.
"Oh!" She shrieked and dropped her pad and pencils. her sketchpad landed in the incoming wave lapping against the shore and quickly receded back into the ocean.
"Ahh no!" Victoria jumped to her feet and shifted her violet skirts out of the way as she ran towards the receding wave.
"What?! What happened, child! Is someone drowning?!" Nanny Margaret clambored to a standing position, wobbiling around as she adjusted her own skirts and cane to hobble over to Victoria.
"My weary bones cannot handle this kind of excitment anymore! Oh my dear, come away from there at once! Your father would have my head on a platter if he saw you now!"
Her boots sloshed in the wet sand and the bottom of her gown became damp, but Victoria hardly cared and frankly, barely even registered the words of her Nanny's voice calling her back.
The sketchpad bobbed in the now deepening water, moving quickly away straight out into the open sea.
Her eyes remained locked on it in fear that it would vanish forever in any given moment.
"No come back!" She shrieked. Too many precious memories and images from her childhood were contained inside that sketchpad. All those memories, scenes that she would never be able to recreate again, floated helpelessly away being erased by the sea water.
Victoria's mind flashed bright with the last images of her mother, smiling back at her. The fresh scent of roses always hovering about her. Her embrace, her laughter.
A voice called to her from miles away, getting lost in the wind and waves.
"Victoria!" The urgency in it's plea washed off of her.
Squeezing her eyes closed tightly and opening them again, Victoria blinked back the forthcoming tears that threatened to spill down her face. Her boots sloshed through the knee deep water as she continued to push through, seeing only her sketchpad mere yards in front of her.
She could feel the water up to her waist now and realized that one good push from the undercurrent could send her whole body tumbling, yet her sketchpad was so close, near enough to stretch her arm out and feel the old binder along the tips of her fingers.
Shoving herself foward, her small hand wrapped around the sketchpad and clasped it. The undercurrent caught her feet. She felt her legs slip out from underneath her as her vision instantly blurred with an onfront of seawater.
She began to spin wildly out of control in the churning water, the current ripping her away from the shore at a mad pace. She lost sense of which direction was up and which was down as she continued to tumble about helplessly.
A long arm snaked around her waist, pulling her through the current. Adrenaline hit her like a crushing force and she saw whisps of white silk clouding around her vision.
She began to struggle vehemently, still holding onto her sketchpad as tightly as possible. She raised the book above her head and beat it against the iron body dragging her deeper.
She felt her sketchpad suddenly get snatched out of her hand. The flash of white crossed in front of her and two eyes, dark as death, watched her so closely, she could see nothing else.
Her chest throbbed with the desperate need to breathe and she began to struggle again, thrashing her limbs as much as she possibly could to unleash herself from the creature's locked hold.
Powerless, exhausted and drowning, Victoria's eyes faught to remain open as she ceased fighting her fate and grew still. The pain in her chest seemed to pulsate throughout her entire body and she felt the darkness coming on, but she ignored it as she remained listelessly suspended in the deep abyss.
The black eyes remained fixated on her face as if she were the only thing that existed. Her eyes fluttered closed, but not before she saw the obsidion depths of the creature's eyes swirl and turn to a dark shade of sapphire blue.
It was a very lovely color, one she did not have a pencil for...
Victoria drifted off into unconsciousness, letting the ocean carry away her body where it may.