Inclination

Lily Pads, Lemons, Lifts

Your body feels weightless as you kick your way up from the bottom of the ocean floor towards the surface, the sun visible just beyond the break and casting wobbly streaks of light towards your arms as you work your way upwards.

The water above you is a hundred different brilliant shades of turquoise, emerald, butterscotch and oatmeal. The water below you is a muddy mixture of soot, charcoal and lead, the texture thick with all the sand and sediment that's been kicked up from your launch. Seahorses, giant squid and jellyfish circle around you, swelling like atomic bombs before pushing forward, their holographic and iridescent rainbow tentacles reaching out towards you and tickling your skin but never once stinging.

Your hands breach the surface of the water and land solidly on a slippery, massive lily pad, its edges curling up in a protective manner as you pull your entire body's weight onto its landing. Oversized lotus blossoms spring up around you, their mauve and white petals pointing towards the sun to soak in its rays happily.

One glance around proves that you're alone on the facade of an endless ocean, the horizon meeting in two different shades of blue with no land in sight in any direction. You stand and hop to the next lily pad, your feet bare and slipping upon your landing; not enough to make you fall over but enough to force you to airplane your arms out for balance.

Your floral babydoll dress ripples behind you as you jump from one lily pad to the next, having to steady yourself in between each leap with the current of the ocean rushing underneath your feet. You're not sure where you are headed to, but something inside of you is driving you forward and you feel the need to obey.

The sun rapidly begins to set and you're becoming fearful of nightfall and being stuck in the middle of ocean at night. You whimper and hunker down inside of a lily pad, picking a lotus flower and clutching it tightly between your fingers as you stare into the unusual seed pod, the tiny filled holes resembling fish eggs or a housefly's compound eyeball with thousands of visual receptors.

When your attention is finally pulled back to your surroundings, the sky is jet black and dotted with an endless escape of stars. You're not sure how or why it became nighttime so fast, but now you're panicking when you look down at the water and realize that it is as black as the sky, the stars reflecting in each wrinkle of water. You lean over the edge of the lily pad to catch a glimpse of your counterpart in the surface and are surprised to see that it's not your face looking back at you, but Harry's.

You reach your fingertips into the water at the same time that Harry does, and when your fingers break the tension, his image disappears momentarily until the water settles again and he reconstitutes before your eyes. This time he is smiling widely, his perfect mouth stretched across the span of his divine facial features. He curls his finger forward for you to join him below the waves but you shake your head, "no, I'm scared."

He curls his finger one more time and speaks with somehow audible words, "don't be. I'm yours. Join me, this ocean is more expansive than that lily pad will ever be." When you stand up and stretch your arms above your head, Harry laughs joyfully and swims back a few yards to allow you space to descend.

You dive forth and pop up next to him, your slick bodies rubbing against one another as you both easily tread water, your toes brushing underneath the saline crests. He gently holds your face and whispers against your lips, his skin wet and salty, "let's swim," before sealing his mouth to yours and weaving your fingers together as you both pull in a gust of air and slip under the waves side by side.

Your alarm rings obnoxiously next to your head as you roll onto your side and slap it once and then twice until the trilling stops. You yawn and stretch, rolling onto your back and rubbing your wickedly sore eyes. You only slept about two hours last night on and off, with your nose tucked into Harry's collarbone after he had confessed a whirlwind of feelings for you.