Water's Embrace || Ao'nung x Neteyam

Chapter 04: Deeper wounds

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I think I want to vomit. I think I don't want to have this disgust churning so deep inside me anymore.

I would love to refer to the action as just getting it out, taking it away from me...but this, this grotesque something I've felt for years can only be vomited up.

the problem is that I'm not good at throwing up. I've tried everything, but I can't generate any kind of retch.

It's driving me crazy. It's pounding inside of me like my heart is wrapped in nausea and dizziness.

And with this nausea, I can't talk, and with this dizziness, I can't get out of bed.

I hope that my siblings can vomit whatever they want to vomit, whenever they want to, no matter how foul it is.

I hope they never have to suffer this listlessness, this nauseating desire not to be.

To not exist anywhere.

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Neteyam sat on his bed, elbows supported on top of his knees and head ducked, face hidden in his hands.

It was safe to say that he was in a panic, and his body was feeling every second of it. After Ao'nung had left Neteyam ran upstairs, closing the door behind him because he couldn't think of a better thing for him to do, but to scramble and hide away after being cached seeing something that, by no means, was meant for him to see.

He had mingled into the family matters of mere strangers, and now he was tangled in it, holding knowledge unwillingly. What would Ao'nung say to him? They were destined to see each other eventually, it was unavoidable, so what excuse could Neteyam possibly have to explain the reason why he had witnessed such private matter?

Should he bring it up when the two of them were alone? Or should he keep quiet and wait for him to say something first? Would Ao'nung say something at all? Judging by the look of terror and utter shame in his eyes Neteyam doubted it was something to be treated slightly.

To see him getting hit by his father was...shaking. Neteyam didn't know the feeling, and he thanked profusely for it. Nor his father nor his mother ever laid a hand on any of their children, so what words were the correct ones to use in a situation like this?

Neteyam was not good at comforting people, or at least he thought he wasn't. His siblings always seemed eased by his presence when something bad happened, but perhaps that was because in his silence he provided such security that it made them feel listened to and cared for, but Neteyam never saw it that way.

In his eyes his inability to perform and provide made him lacking and inadequate. He was their older brother, and as such he had the obvious obligation to be an example, the rock on which they could lean on, but how could he do that if he felt like he was about to crumble at any second?

How could he comfort anyone when he never was?

He stood up when he saw the shape of someone from the corner of his eye. Carefully he moved the curtain and looked out of the window to see Ao'nung striding towards the big mass of trees and bushes afar. The same path they had taken to the lake that same evening.

Something inside Neteyam's chest lit a spark of worry, and his terrible mind placed a fatal thought that he believed he was capable of shaking away, but after five, ten, fifteen minutes he realized that if he kept pacing around, he would make a hole on the ground.