A Sinking Ship

Part IV: The Stories Aren't What They Seem

                                                                 Ada

I blinked once. Twice. Thrice. Four, five, six times.

It was a blur, and I was spinning, the gravity pulling, pulling, pulling me farther down into the blue tinted halls of nothingness. And when it finally stopped, I realized that the spinning was the only thing keeping me steady. I stumbled forward, falling face first into the water.

But there was no splash. 

The soft feeling of snow tickled my cheeks instead. But it wasn't cold, in fact, it was strangely warm, like sand on the beach absorbing the heat of the sun. And I felt it. The sun beating down on my back. Sweat began to pour down my body, sticking my t-shirt to my skin. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes.

I wasn't on a beach. It really was snow as far as the eye could see. The warm air melted away, replaced with a frosty cold wind, bitting at my skin like parinhas. The sun disappeared and what I thought would be a nice blue sky reavealed itself to be a depressing gray, hidden behind mountains of dark clouds looming on the horizon. White flakes floated down to the earth softly

A flash of light cracked down on the ground far in the distance, making the hair on my arm stand straight as electricity filled the air. It traveled deep in my bones. 

I closed my eyes and shivered. Once. Twice. Thrice.

I took a breath. Once. Twice. Thrice.

And then I opened my eyes.

A blue light pulsed in the distance, and I gasped as a force knocked me off my feet. I fell to the ground and rolled down a hill. I bounced off a rock and flipped, and suddenly, I was sliding straight toward a cliff. A breath caught in my throat and I began to panick, thrashing wildly, grabbing for anything that could stop me from falling. I spotted a climbing axe, lodged into the dirt as if someone else had tried to stop themselves from falling too, but failed. I stretched my arm and strained myself just enough to get my fingers around the grip. My body swung off of the cliff and the climbing axe dislodged itself just a bit.

"Shit!" I screamed. My voice echoed, and at first, I thought it was normal, and I brushed it off.

I pulled myself back over the ledge and began to climb back up the hill, using the climbing axe to stay on my feet. 

This time, when I saw the blue light pulse in the distance, I braced myself. The force was like the shock wave of a bomb, a really powerful bomb. When the blue light disappeared, I continued. I rolled onto the top of the hill, and lied on my back for a while, breathing heavily like I had just run a marathon.

And then I thought back to that echo. I wasn't in a valley, not a canyon. There was no "walls" for my voice to bounce off of. So how did it echo?

My thoughts were interupted when another light pulse, shot through the flatland, but I wasn't prepared this time. I flew off of my back, and almost went back over the hill again. I screamed into the cold night, expecting to tumble back down the hill, when something, or someone, grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me back onto the ledge.

They started to drag me through the snow, and I tried to look over my shoulder to see who, or what, it was, but I couldn't. It went on like that for a while, and for some reason, I didn't fight it. I just allowed them to drag me. They were better at bracing for the shockwave then I was, and their body shielded me from it. 

After what seemed like hours, though it was probably just a few minutes, they came to halt and let go of my shirt. I had no intention in getting up, at all, but they seemed quite hell bent on getting me to followe them. They grabbed the back of my shirt once again and pulled me up to my feet.