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I sink fast into darkness, fall through the water, blindly feel for a center but I fall past it. I flounder for something but all I find is thick water, nothing nothing nothing. I fall so far, my eyes are forced open and the light in the darkness is harsh and blinding, I just hear chaos that jolts my ears and feel so much all at once, I dive deeper and everything is gone again. I fall too far again, light and sound and feeling again, the smell of heat and sweat and blood and the feeling of someone doing something to me, pain everywhere- I am so deep, I can not breathe- and then all is gone again. I struggle less, begin to float up, seconds of sensation jar my brain between the moments of darkness and the pain courses into the water and is lost in it. The water encompasses everything. I see again, and I make out soldiers, a young blonde soldier fire a gun. Another with a sword charging, being blocked by someone's gun. A horse over everything, rearing, rider with his hands in the reigns and yelling. And everything shifts and I see Anne. Anne with hair dark against the blinding sky. I can hardly see her face though it is quite close, but it is pale, her lips moving but what she says is lost in the roar of battle. And then everything shifts again- I shift- and through my eyes- they don't need to blink anymore, I don't need to breathe even, the water covers me and drowns me- I see Kyle, fighting without seeing me but fighting almost next to me. Tears run down his cheeks and he turns his head away as he shoots the trigger, and then as he is braced against the recoil his eyes open wide and his mouth also, and he falls forward. And blood pours down the back of his shirt. And then the water no longer encompasses everything, it begins to fill with pain and I fall again, or float, I am in darkness again and suddenly I'm surrounded by everything fragile and there is the center. But the center is full of pain. I open my eyes and the power in the trance is pain too. I feel my skin shed light, I know that I throw light. And Kyle lies in blood. His blood. And the pain surges, my blood surges, it quickens and the center moves, the world shakes and the entire sea shifts. My entire being, the whole ocean behind me flows out into the world. For long moments I feel everything leaving, leaving with the light. I gasp for air, the pain stabs me hard, and I lose the center and then everything fades. In the last moment, I see Anne, further away, standing and stopped with half-torn bandage cloth still in her mouth as soldiers surge around her, her face pale as the sky and her eyes wide. Chaos fades into silence.
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