Dying Is The Easy Part

Chapter Seventeen: January 26th

The lake was troubled when Quinn stumbled into the clearing. It shouldn't have been—there was no wind, and even when there was, the lake never produced any real waves. But it did. And Quinn was glad for it.

They took off their clothes in jerky, angry motions without caring to look where they landed. Once they were left in their boxers and their binder, they marched straight towards the water, ignoring the cold as they kept moving.

"Move," they rasped, pushing their hands forward. And the water... it did. It moved into the direction Quinn had pointed, piling into a wave that was higher than they were tall before crashing down, making the entire lake surge with its force.

Quinn pulled their hands toward them, curled into tight fists against their chest. "Come back."

The water surged towards them, dark and fast and terrifying. They said "Stop" and it abruptly halted, parting down the middle and collapsing seconds before it could touch them.

Quinn did it again and again, making waves and then breaking them, pushing back against the lake and pulling it in again. They did it until their arms were straining and their throat felt raw, until they couldn't tell anymore if the wetness on their cheek was tears or water, until they couldn't remember where they ended and where the lake began.

And then, when the roaring of the water matched what they felt on the inside, they swam to the middle of the lake and did it once again. This time, they didn't say stop. They let the wave crash over them and drag them under.

Quinn sank like a stone. They didn't resist, didn't move a limb. They just went, feeling the water enveloping them and pressing them down, holding them tighter than even Luis had held them.

It was the first time Quinn had ever gone beneath the surface.

The first thing they noted was the darkness. Aside from the thin silver threads of moonlight, it was like swimming in ink; whether their eyes were closed or wide open didn't make a difference.

The second thing was the silence. It was so, so quiet. This far down, they couldn't hear the waves, couldn't hear the wind. It wasn't like the silence after they'd turned off the spirit box in the archive, heavy and ringing; it was an absence of sound so thorough Quinn felt like there had never been any noise to begin with, like this was the way the world was supposed to be. Something about that thought made Quinn's chest feel lighter.

As they floated through the pitch-black, a panicked little voice in the back of their head told them that they needed to get back to the surface, back to where there was oxygen. They knew the water would have parted around them just as easily as it had pushed them down if they wanted it to. They also knew, suddenly and with a bone-deep certainty, that it didn't have to.

The water belonged to them, just like they belonged to the water. They had what they needed.

After a few seconds, their feet touched the bottom of the lake. Quinn sank down, cross-legged, their eyes closed as they listened to the silence. Their heart was beating slower now, steady and alive. The water wasn't freezing anymore—instead, it felt like it had adjusted on their way down and was now just a little bit colder than their body temperature.

Quinn tilted their face up as it caressed their face, gentle and cool. Last time, they'd been too distracted by Luis to fully take in how it felt, but now, with their hands braced against the bottom of the lake, all their focus was on the water as it pulsed, ever so slightly, in time with their heartbeat. When they concentrated, they could sense exactly how far the lake stretched, could feel where it pressed against the earth that constrained it on all sides, could pinpoint the exact spot where it connected to the Murmuring River.