Entity #444

16: Sublimity

Marzena

Wading through the lukewarm waters of the poolrooms brought a new peace to my soul and my body. Coming down after my nearly fatal attack, I actually started to enjoy the water flowing around me, lifting and supporting my weight. The currents wound around my limbs and caressed my form in a loving way.

Water had been my best friend since I could remember. Here was no different- finding the poolrooms felt like receiving a warm hug after what I had been through. I waded in the shallows, and where I couldn't wade, I swam. Where I couldn't swim, I got out and walked until the cold air got to me. As I wandered, so did my mind, trying to preserve the last bit of sanity I had left. The adrenaline still stung my veins.

I clung to my walking stick, rolling it between my hands when wading, and clutching it between my thighs when swimming. No way would I lose the only defense I had. As I carried it, my thumb traced over the engravings absent-mindedly. There seemed to be shapes carved in it, but I didn't stop to look. I was too consumed with my surroundings, and remained focused on what was in front of me.

After a while of being in the water, my skin pruned. I found myself wading through a tunnel, where the light on the other side was warm much unlike the moonlight I had been wading under previously. I looked around, filled with wonder. Logic and background knowledge told me there would be no entities here. Saddened yet also relieved by this, my mind started to relax a bit, and the death grip on my walking stick loosened.

When I came out of the other side, I was greeted by sunlight and a spiraling staircase in the center of a tall, bright room. The staircase was a waterfall in itself, water flowing down the steps and into the pool I was in. The room, with its windows at the top near the ceiling, was small. The only way was up through the ceiling.

This is a good place to rest... 

I slowly began to climb up out of the water near the edge of the room, throwing my walking stick up onto the dry white tiling. The weightlessness of being in the water I had gotten so used to, that now when I was out, my body felt so heavy. As the fatigue kicked in, I listened to the sounds of the water lapping at the pool edges. It was almost soothing. I sat against the wall in a patch of sunlight, and squeezed my hair out, slicking back my bangs.

The sun began to warm and dry my body as I closed my eyes. The warmer, humid air here enveloped me. My mind wandered back to Nazarius and the black water of the river we traversed together. The aqua-blue of this pool water was much more inviting, but I preferred the rushing black water of the river if it meant I could be with the beast.

It was comforting to remember what it was like to sit upon his back, with all of his body heat seeping into my bones. The scene of him looking back at me and admiring me with one glowing eye replayed in my mind. "You wear this river like a gown," he had growled. His deep, gravelly voice had been nearly choked with a kind of... desire? I had shivered when he added a simple, "Beautiful," at the end of his statement.

As I reconsidered this situation past, my exhaustion got the best of me. I briefly lost consciousness and began to snooze. It wasn't long before a vision started to form.

"If you lay back and relax, you'll float," the stallion murmured with his head low to the warm, shin-deep water we were in. I held my arms around my knees, sitting folded in a fetal position. The light here in the caverns was dim and the sight distance was no more than three feet, making me feel like I was in a hole, about to be sucked under. My dry clothes sat in a pile outside of the small hot spring we sat in.