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────008, chasing the sun.
CLEO BENNETT ISN'T A STRANGER TO DEATH.
The first thing she remembers is the cold━━the shocking and formidable cold, so dense and petrifying that she had thought she had died. But the indescribable burning sensation that gripped at her lungs made her aware that she wasn't dead━━not yet at least. She was helpless, sinking further and further into the murky darkened depths of the ocean as the storm brawled on overhead beyond the surface. She couldn't move, couldn't cry out for help. It was as if she were motionless, frozen in time, watching herself from an outer presence as the fleeting life faded out of her eyes.
Then, she was met with nothing but the stark contrast of a never ending darkness. When she awoke━━perhaps days later, months later, or an eternity later, as it often felt like at the time━━she found herself in a hospital and with the grim realization she had lost it all.
She remembers some details of the accident well enough, vivid imagery too stubborn to ever vanish from her mind. When she was fourteen, her mother had gone boating with Wesley and Cleo when a storm struck. Lucy Bennett had asked Cleo to come with them━━a family bonding experience, she had called it━━and Cleo had almost missed it, too young and naive and foolish to pay attention, instead, spent the night prior at the Chateau after sneaking drinks out onto the dock with her and her friends to enjoy the night, and nearly sleeping in past her alarm. Her father couldn't come because he had been working, but she and Wesley were there when it happened. He remembers it well; she doesn't. Even months after the mishap, the memories become muddled, brain too waterlogged and tarnished by trauma to recollect the time. The storm had rolled in before anyone could warn them, and they were out in high tide when it happened.
Miraculously, Wesley and Cleo survived but their mother did not and for months each surviving member of the Bennett family would deal their hand in grief as they blamed no one but themselves for what happened. Kellan, for not taking time off work to join the excursion, to help before things got dire; Wesley, for feeling useless in his attempt at doing anything to protect his mother and little sister; and Cleo, for not being able to remember her last moments with her mother, for being the one to survive when her mother hadn't. Oftentimes, she wondered why it hadn't been the other way around; why she was the one who got to live to see another day.
And with her death came the guilt and shame that wrecked her body and her mind, her pain lived on as she became frightened by the unforeseen powers of the raging tempest of the sea, reminded constantly of the tragedy that befell their family. She couldn't look at the ocean the same way ever again, despite having grown up to love it. It had taken her months to learn to feel safe ever stepping foot onto a boat again━━and how could she not? It had been partly forced, her mind probing her to just get over it when all she was surrounded by was water in Outer Banks. But whether it be standing on a docked marina boat or one that was sifting through the tranquil waters of the marsh, she would not dare venture any further, petrified that what happened before could very well happen again.
