Sinking

The water is cold.

That's the first thing I notice. Not the darkness pressing in from all sides, not the way the waves have stopped fighting me, not the fact that my lungs are starting to burn. Just the cold. It wraps around me like something alive, something patient, something that's been waiting.

I don't fight it.

I've been fighting for twenty-eight years. Fighting to be the daughter my mother wanted. Fighting to be the girlfriend David needed. Fighting to be the friend, the employee, the person everyone expected me to see in the mirror.

I'm so tired.

The burn in my chest spreads. My body wants to panic, primitive reflexes trying to save a life I've already decided isn't worth saving. But I've gotten good at ignoring what my body wants. Years of practice. Smile when you want to scream. Nod when you want to run. Keep breathing when breathing feels like too much effort.

Now I can stop.

The darkness is complete. I can't tell which way is up anymore, and I find I don't care. The cold has moved past discomfort into something almost peaceful. Numbness spreading from my fingers and toes, working its way toward my center.

This is what I wanted.

This is what I walked into the ocean to find.

Peace.

Something moves below me.

At first I think it's a current, some underwater force shifting the water, pushing against my sinking form. But currents don't have mass. Currents don't have intention.

This does.

I open my eyes, when did I close them?, and see nothing. Total darkness. The deep. But I feel it, vast and patient, rising from below. Something enormous, something old, something that makes the ocean itself seem small.

I should be afraid.

I'm not.

Contact.

Something wraps around my waist, not human, too flexible, too strong, and my descent stops. I hang suspended in the dark, held by something I can't see, can't comprehend.

Light blooms.

Faint at first, like the glow of dying embers. Then stronger. Bioluminescence tracing patterns along... along...

I can't process what I'm seeing.

Tentacles. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, stretching into the darkness beyond my vision. Each one thick as a tree trunk, covered in suckers that pulse with soft blue light. They move with terrible grace, curling through the water around me, surrounding me in a cage of ancient flesh.

And at the center, rising like a moon from the depths, a face.

Not human. Never human. Eyes like amber moons, pupils horizontal slits that expand as they focus on me. Features that suggest a face without committing to one, planes and angles that shift in the bioluminescent glow. Beautiful the way earthquakes are beautiful. Terrible the way gods are terrible.

He looks at me.

I look back.

Air rushes into my lungs.

Not water, air. I gasp, choking, my body convulsing with the desperate need to breathe. But I'm still underwater. Still surrounded by cold and dark and this impossible creature who holds me suspended in the deep.

"You are not drowning."

His voice doesn't come from his mouth. It comes from everywhere, the water itself vibrating with sound, resonating in my bones. Ancient. Patient. Curious.

I try to speak. Cough instead. My lungs are clear, my breath coming easy, and none of this makes sense.

"I have given you breath." The tentacle around my waist shifts, pulling me closer to that vast face. "You will not die unless I allow it."

My voice comes out as a whisper. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why save me?"

The amber eyes narrow slightly. Those massive pupils contracting as he studies me with an intensity that should be terrifying. That would be terrifying, if I had any fear left.

"You were falling into the deep. I caught you."

"I wanted to fall."

Silence.

The bioluminescence pulses slowly around us, the rhythm of something that has existed since before humans learned to count. The tentacles holding me don't tighten or loosen. He simply... waits.

"You wanted to end," he says finally.

"Yes."

"Why?"

I laugh. It comes out wrong, broken glass and bitter water. "That's a complicated question."

"I have time. I have nothing but time." A pause. "You do not. But I have given you enough breath to answer."

"I don't know if I can."

"Then we will stay here until you do."

I float in his grip, breathing impossible air, staring into eyes older than civilization.

I should be dead.

I wanted to be dead.

Instead, I'm held by something from the depths of nightmare and legend, and the most disturbing thing isn't what he is.

It's that looking at him, being held by him, suspended in the cold dark of the deep...

I feel something.

Not peace. Not the emptiness I've carried for months. Something else. Something I can't name because I've forgotten what having feelings feels like.

"What are you?" I whisper.

"Old." The word carries weight. "Forgotten. One of many names, none of them known anymore." A tentacle brushes my face, not threatening, almost... gentle. "The question is what are you, human who wanted to end. And why do you look at me without fear?"

"I'm not afraid of monsters."

"No?"

"I stopped being afraid of anything a long time ago. Fear requires caring about survival."

Those ancient eyes study me. "You are strange."

"I'm tired."

"Strange and tired." The tentacles shift, lifting me, carrying me upward, or downward, I can't tell anymore. "I have never met a human who thanked the darkness for swallowing them. You interest me, drowning one."

"Where are you taking me?"

"Home." The word resonates through the water. "My home. Your grave, if you still wish it. But not yet."

"Why not yet?"

"Because you have not answered my question." The light grows stronger as we descend, no, rise, no, I don't know anymore. "Why did you want to end? I have waited a thousand years with nothing. I will wait longer to understand."

I close my eyes.

The creature carries me through the deep, and I let it.

Whatever comes next, at least it's not the nothing I'd resigned myself to.

At least it's not the same slow drowning I've been doing for years.

At least it's something.