Re: lake, by the shore
Perceived madness didn't change the girl's nature, and she wouldn't let him drown. She would've gone under herself trying to save him. She might've conversed with fish along the way, discussed the meaning of life and the passing of ships with them, but she would've died trying to pull him out of that lake. Except she couldn't die and she couldn't drown. It wasn't drowning that normally kept her rapt in terms of death. It was a different death, one at the end of a rope that didn't snap under the weight of the body hanging from it. But tonight it was drowning and the fear of it. A fear that had kept her grounded when she ought not to have been.
Muck was kicked up bleak and hopeless white to murky surface, and she considered whether his statement about talking a certain way was true. "You should use feeling words. People respond to those well. At first they might be hard, but they can become habit. Do you have nice people in your life?" Not the fish. For once she didn't mention the chaotic thoughts. She kept her lights and her beats from becoming utterances. What she was saying was important, and he seemed like a man more likely to listen to someone he believed sane, even if that sanity was false.
"Are you ill?" She associated strength and illness, weakness and health, and she heaved him easily the remainder of the way, unless he fought her. She had no trouble with his weight, considerable or not, even on the shore. There she dropped in sopping glory. Pink clung destroyed to her long legs. The white wifebeater outlined an unimpressive chest of no curvature. She pushed short strands of hair off her cheeks, and she drew her knees up to her chest. The world beat its lights behind her, and the island was far ahead. "Do you regret things you didn't do? Things you could've done, but that fear kept you from doing?" she asked. She should offer a towel or warmth or to go get medical attention, but that would require a much more grounded view of the evening. He wasn't drowning. He was alive. The ship sailed on.