Ice.

Dragging me down.

Invading my veins.

Ice.

It froze my skin, locked all my joints, rendered me a tin soldier in an ocean.

My head was thrust under.

And the ache in my bones was -

I was forced under again.

Icicles formed of my hair and the cold was so...

It lessened.

The cold lessened.

It lessened and then the heat set in and it burned my blood even though my joints were locked still.

Another wave hit me square in the face.

Gagging. I gagged in the saltwater as the current dashed me quicker and quicker towards impending black rocks.

I didn't know my name. I didn't know my life. All I knew was the increasingly sluggish pound from within my chest.

And the rocks, they came closer and and closer and -

They blew to my stomach.

The unkind rock, it tore the very skin open, left me there, a rag doll with a split in its middle, it's stuffing spilling out onto the weapon.

I was impaled.

Blood gurgled out around the spike of rock in my stomach. It's warmth, it's presence, it's vitality. It told me a story; the story of my life.

"Evie!" I cried as her face came back to me, as our mission came back to me, as our kiss came back to me.

My teeth sunk into my lip as I bore my whole weight on my arms, fighting back against the lashing water, pulling myself out of the cliff face, my eyes glued on the shadow just above me. My teeth broke the skin. My arms pulled me up, higher, higher still and there I was.

A cave.

A small, high cave.

A cave with enough smooth ground for a dying man to scream his lungs out on, his agony smothered by the roar of the sea.

It didn't hurt, my chest, but it bled. I felt the skin jerk up with every new presentation of blood, the liquid almost freezing as soon as it hit my skin.

Stop. The. Bleeding.

I wriggled frantically to get my trousers off, they were trapping me, my legs, I could barely move and the effort. The sheer effort of trying to get them off but there they were, by my feet there they were in their heap.

Sitting up slowly and pulling the soaking legs around my wound and pulling. Pulling so tight that what breath I had left nearly deserted me.

Then it was down. It was tight.

Then my arms screamed, concrete bands around them squeezing so tight and there they were on my ankles too. And my whole body then. My whole body was in a concrete cuccoon, squeezing tighter and tighter. But not my face.

No my face froze, thawed, froze again. Thin glass needles slid into my cheeks, my eyes, my throat with each passing breath.

Convulsions.

One.

Two.

Three.

I felt blissful for a millisecond after each one, then there was the concrete, there was the glass.

Then another convulsion and another break.

Then the concrete took my eyes hostage. The great brute gravity dragged them down through my skull. Even when I closed the lids, my eyes tried to sink further into the rock.

I ached.

A crack. My ribs. An almighty crack to my ribs.

Retching, sea water, blood. I was lightheaded. I was dizzy. The concrete was not so hard though.

"Ganechka?" A woman's voice, far away.

There was a little pressure behind my head, then on my forehead, just for a moment. Then on my stomach, like a layer of skin was being painlessly peeled. The pain came only when it was replaced, squeezing down on my chest so hard.

My throat tried to protest, it gurgled in some way.

Softness.

Softness at my neck, around my head. By my shoulders. My arms and my legs and my chest and warmth.

Little pressures pushed gently at little intervals on one side of my body, especially my cheek. Frequent pressures by my cheek.

And there was a faraway voice. Angels. Or maybe just one, it was too hard to tell. But angels serenaded me to sleep, singing the lullaby of the heavens.

A soft pressure in the middle of my forehead, it traced a line down between my eyebrows, down my nose, over my lips, to my chin, to my neck.

And a pressure on my lips. The softest pressure in the world, over foreign scars to the lower lip - it didn't feel right.

A call back into sleep.

A call which was obeyed.