[ Fᴇᴀᴛᴜʀᴇᴅ ᴏɴ @WᴀᴛᴛᴘᴀᴅAsɪᴀɴFᴀɴᴛᴀsʏ, @Fᴀɴᴛᴀsʏ, @Aᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ᴀɴᴅ @ᴍʏᴛʜᴀɴᴅʟᴇɢᴇɴᴅ ]
Wᴀᴛᴛᴘᴀᴅ Iɴᴅɪᴀ Aᴡᴀʀᴅs 2021 Wɪɴɴᴇʀ (Tʜᴀᴛ Sᴇᴄʀᴇᴛ Qᴜᴇsᴛ)
ONC 2021 Lᴏɴɢʟɪsᴛᴇʀ
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As mysterious flash-floods rising from a dam reservoir begin drowning the town of K...
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"Drop those anchors right now, you raving lunatics unless you want to...t-to..."
The swaying wooden walls of the ship's leaking galley dissolved into the stone ceiling with each blink. The serpent-ship sailor, long retired from service in form but still battling the elements every night since, exhaled through her mouth. It was the same nightmare that had been haunting her since her last voyage. The freak storm had shredded the sturdy ship into broken planks and torn cables. It resurrected itself often in her sleep, forcing her to relive that moment again and again. Her grip on the ropes of her ship loosened as they returned to being the soft rolls of her bed covers. The saltwater she was drenched in from head to toe didn't come from the sea.
She focused on her breathing as per her physician's advice.
"Practise prānayama, controlled breathing," she had said, "it'll reduce the tension and ease your body."
Almost immediately, her concentration faltered as her nasal congestion acted up.
She sat upright, tapped and pinched the bridge of her nose to declutter it. Her eyelids fluttered as her groggy head swung forward onto her fingers. A sigh of satisfaction pushed her into full consciousness from the vestiges of her nightmare as her stuffy nose drained.
Thump, came a sound.
She lifted her bowed face and looked around her room. It was pitch black, and she could just barely make out the feeble outline of her closed doorway. She had woken up in the middle of the night again. The thick black curtains draped across the two glass windows kept out most of the dust and almost all the light. As she listened, the continuous thumping slowly distinguished itself from her elevated heart rate and rose to be heard. Her cotton clothes clung to her wet skin like sailors onto a capsizing boat. Tucking her uttarīya into her pant's waistband and draping it across her torso to cover her soaked blouse, she leaned over her bed to look under it.
A single drop of sweat slid off the bridge of her nose and dissolved into the layer of water covering her bedroom floor. Her sandals bobbed near a bedpost alongside her brass water jug. Dried leaves, twigs, humus and the empty husks of various dead insects floated in it. She scowled and turned her head towards the doorway as the foul stench hit her nose.
Mām na hanthu, flashed a thought across her mind, a plea to the water below her.
Don't kill me.
"What in the name of the Mirror mother," she mumbled as she got off her creaky bed. The waters felt freezing and itchy to her shins as she waded across her flooded house, patting and groping her way through in the darkness. Doorways and walls blurred into each other as she moved past them.
