Dark Waters Rising

Breathe

"Wesley," a disembodied voice echoed around him. It felt so familiar. Warm. Feminine.

"Yes, ma?" his own voice responded tiredly, but it wasn't him that spoke the words. Well, not exactly.

A familiar scene unfolded around him. He recognized the space as his childhood home, and as he looked upon his mother, roughly the same age as he was now, he knew it was a memory.

She laid upon the singular cot in their small, one roomed abode. Her skin was pale and glistening with sweat. At first, he wondered if she was ill, but when he saw a younger version of himself, just a boy really, sitting in a chair beside her with an infant baby girl swaddled in his arms, he realized she was recovering from childbirth.

"You don't have to keep holding her, honey. You need to sleep, too."

Wesley's younger self simply shook his head, gazing fondly down at his little sister. His expression fell a little as he turned his gaze to his mother.

"She's having trouble breathing again," his younger self informed her, returning his gaze to watch the child as she slept. Wesley remembered that at the time, he had thought that if he kept watching the rise and fall of her little chest, it wouldn't stop. That he could somehow will her to keep breathing through the night. She was so small, so fragile, and all he wanted was to protect her. "Is she sick?"

Wesley's mother didn't know the answer, but she did her best to explain what she knew to her eldest child.

"Some children are born before they're ready to be," she said in a soft, motherly tone. "Your sister wanted to see the world before it was her time to. Before this morning, she was in a safe, warm, protected place, but now she is in our world and there is nothing to protect her from the cold and the dangers we cannot see."

"I'll protect her," young Wesley said, cradling her close.

His mother smiled softly. "I'm sure you will," she said, "but she has to protect herself first. If she is strong enough, she will survive."

"But she's so small," he said.

"Being small doesn't mean you're weak."

Young Wesley was silent as he let her words sink in. After a while of contemplation, he asked, "What's her name?"

"I haven't given her one yet," his mother said.

"Why not?"

"If she survives the first few days, then I will name her."

"Why wait that long?"

Wesley's mother's lips pressed together, but she answered him regardless. "Because her death would be hard enough without getting more attached."

Wesley didn't like that way of thinking.

"That's stupid," he said, wrinkling his nose a bit in distaste. She had made it this far and that was a feat in and of itself. Wesley knew his mother had had a stillborn son a few years before he was born. It was sad to think about, but not an uncommon occurrence. Children were precious and sometimes the gods needed them back before they had really begun to live. He figured she at least deserved a name.

"Well," his mother said, "What would you name her, then?"

Young Wesley thought about it as he looked down at the girl's peaceful face. Though he couldn't see them at the moment, he knew she had bright blue eyes, similar to his own, though his had darkened over time. He had no way of knowing whether her eyes would stay blue like their father's or turn honey brown like their mother's, but he quite liked them the way they were. It was like looking at the sky, or the ocean.