☽~✧●✧~☾ 

"I want you to do something for me, Marama."

"What?"

"Close your eyes and tell me what you see."

Once my eyelids shut, I was faced with nothingness until the image of a rainy day appeared. I saw it on a huge screen similar to one in a movie theatre, yet I was also in that image, standing in the rain in front of my house.

The black door opened to reveal my foyer and kitchen, but once I stepped over the threshold, I was submerged in water. I felt the drop in my stomach as gravity tugged me downward, and everything went black again.

When I opened my eyes, water was surrounding me indefinitely. The silence was constricting and heavy, save for the muted sounds of bubbles around me. I couldn't see any other living thing. I was alone in an airtight, endless body of water, yet somehow I found myself breathing normally.

As I kept myself afloat, my eyes were captivated by a light piercing through the water up ahead. I began to kick my legs to propel myself forward, using my arms to help me wade through the water. The light was a magnet, and I couldn't repel its gripping force even if I wanted to.

When I looked up, I saw a shining figure in flowing white silk, with pearls adorning her pale wrists and neck. Her silk robe emitted countless beams of white light that pierced through the water and stretched across the sky. Her enormous sparkling wings gently flapped back and forth, suspending her body in the air.

Her features became more clear to me when I swam closer to the surface. Her glistening silver eyes, identical to mine, were looking straight ahead. A warm, radiant smile stretched across her face. Something about her features were eerily familiar, which made me all the more excited to approach her.

My arms stroked through the water, but it was as if I wasn't moving. I was the same distance away, if not further, from the surface. My eyebrows furrowed, but I kept kicking as hard as I could, eager to meet this angel face to face.

I slowed down after what seemed like forever. The fatigue in my muscles worked hard against my excitement, but when I looked up at her again, I found a new sense of motivation. It dawned on me that the angel's features were uncanny to my mother's.

There was an insatiable urge to call out to her, to get her attention somehow. I tried to open my mouth, but my lips seemed to be sealed shut. My vocal chords could only produce a hum, and I struggled to separate my lips.

But when my mouth finally opened, it sucked in the water like a vacuum.

I gasped, gripping my neck to somehow force my throat closed from the outside, but to no avail. Coughing out the water only made it shoot back down my throat. It was an endless cycle of choking that made it impossible to breathe. My jaw was unhinged and I was desperately in need of air. My heart was beating loudly in my ears from the lack of oxygen.

I felt my body dropping despite my legs flailing frantically. I was damned either way: if my mouth closed, I wouldn't be able to breathe, but if it didn't, water would continue to fill my burning lungs. I was getting dizzy and fading fast.

As gravity pulled me into the abyss below me, the angel's light began to fade. Despite how far away I was, my arms desperately reached for her, somehow hoping that she could save me. I fought the stinging in my eyes as her gaze locked with mine.

There was an unreadable expression on her face. It was blank and no longer radiant. Her smile was gone. A single tear fell from her right eye, sliding down her pale skin and plummeting into the ocean.

The force of the teardrop made the surface of the water ripple above me, and her light dimmed as the darkness was closing in. No matter how loudly I screamed, no matter how much I reached for her, her light could no longer touch me. It was cold. Dark. Lifeless.

My body, a dead weight, was falling endlessly into the void.

☽~✧●✧~☾