Angels, Demons, Donuts and Pixie Tea

Strange Bedfellows

She spent an eternity locked beneath layers and layers of ice.

It took her a while to understand that it was an eternity of dreaming, that time was stretching around her in her mind as she floated in her solid prison, further insulated from the world by a fathom of water on all sides. She was deep enough that the light did not reach her, that her eyes could not pick up colours, though she could see dark forms moving beyond the walls that trapped her.

It was so cold here, her skin burned.

She could feel the air getting heavier, her body drifting further and further away from where she needed to be. It didn't take long for her to realize that she would suffocate down here. Even if she didn't freeze solid in the ice, her breath would run out and she would continue to sink in the darkness forever.

The solid mass around her swallowed her screams as surely as it prevented her from moving an inch. But she thrashed, she fought, she railed against whatever is killing her with all the fury she could manage. Someone, long ago, told her that she couldn't do this alone. She couldn't remember if she had listened to them or not.

Warmth came unexpectedly and cracked the ice enough for her hand to move a tiny amount. The water pouring in was warm, and she reached for it, feeling the trickle run across her skin, soothing the rest of her chilled and immobile body. A part of her was aware that she was no longer sinking, perhaps even becoming buoyant as she warmed up.

It made little sense, that the water was filling the spaces around her body, expanding them and yet somehow allowing more air to filter in to her. As if the moment it warmed her skin, the water turned to air and allowed her to breathe. She felt herself rise, breathing more and warming until the prison solidified once more, trapping her beneath the surface. The cracks had bought her time, a few hours or days or centuries.

She had no way of knowing.

Slowly, her body began to freeze again, the prison locking around her, painful now that she was aware of the change in temperature. And left to slowly sink once again.

Then, like last time, she felt the warmth, and then the walls cracked a little wider, allowing her more sensation, more time to breathe and feel life come back to her body before the prison returned around her.

The cycle returned over and over again until finally the cell of frozen water around her shattered into a million pieces. In a warm stream of water that pulled her upwards, her body laboured as she began to swim, chasing after the rapidly retreating solace of heat.

Her feet froze together first, as the cold water rushed in around them. And once motionless, her legs soon followed, until she was fighting the weight of all that ice, reaching desperately for the warmth she could not keep up to. She couldn't scream, she couldn't breathe, and the warm fluidity of the water left her once more. Her race to the surface ended with her encased in her unforgiving, frozen dungeon.

The next time the heat comes, the ice is thinner, shattering quicker and allowing her to swim further, faster, longer until it captured her once more. Her body quaked with the effort by the time she was done and with still no trace of light above her. Though the feeling of the surface is closer, she knows that she is getting closer.

The pressure lessons with each cycle of escape, flight and capture. She doesn't sink fast enough to completely erase the distance she crosses, but she knows she is re-treading the same water over and over again.

And then the ice stops coming back. The water is warm, her body remains warm, but she only has so much strength before she must rest, floating in the abyss until she can manage a little further.

Every time she stops, she sinks.

If she stops for too long, the water cools off. Forms still swim in the surrounding dark, scaled skin brushes against her body but disappears before she can turn to see what it was. Though the predators in the depths have not yet decided to attack her, they let her know that they are there, waiting and watching.