Callista didn't know what was happening in her mind underneath the waves.
Driftwood floated past her, getting tangled in the braids of seaweed on the ocean floor. She'd only heard of shipwrecks as legends for most of her life, the results of clashes between pirates and the Skirys navy or the tragedies of passenger and fishing ships going out in the wrong storm at the wrong time. It was an end she couldn't quite wrap her head around once, being so used to living on land. She would live on land, she would die on land, she would be buried on land.
And then she'd come to the pirate islands.
The blue of the sea, she'd been told by other knights, was like a tub of sapphires. You put your hand in and it was blue all the way down. They were all wrong, which led her to think they'd never seen the sea before either. The sea was green, and it was indigo, and sometimes it was black or deep red. Sometimes it was the color she'd heard a word existed for in another language, but not in either of hers. Sometimes the sea refused to be classified as any shade of any color at all.
Here, shipwrecks were real. You'd either survived one, or you knew someone who had or hadn't. Even Guild Rogue made their dead into shipwrecks. They would gather the floating pieces of the ship that had once carried them, set their pirates on them, and let them be on the water one last time. Perhaps she wouldn't be buried on land after all.
It was bold of her to even assume she'd get any kind of ceremony for her death, let alone a proper funeral.
Callista couldn't even tell their bodies apart from the debris. Was that a part of their mast floating by, or was it Meridian?
She saw bubbles floating up, far up to the surface, and realized they were coming from her. Running out of air didn't feel the same way it had a few days ago, when Aloysius had choked her and the rest of the crew. This time, it felt almost drowsy, like she'd numbed herself with something right before she'd hit the water. Hell, she didn't even remember the moment their boat had broken apart. For all she knew, she'd swallowed a painkiller right before impact.
One last clear thought came to her.
How am I supposed to die here?
Callista didn't want to place too much of her faith in fate, but there were a couple things she could believe in. The prophecy was one of them. And the promise she'd been told two years earlier was another.
If she died here, underwater in the depths, it meant Iliana had been wrong.
Iliana didn't make mistakes like that.
Callista wasn't sure if she had rolled over of her own will, but she was on her back now, facing the surface. Far above, she could see the sun glinting off the waves. Sun. It had been sunny, hadn't it?
The sky is clear.
It was no longer a comforting mantra.
She might've felt something touch her hand-- grainy and firm, but soft-- and she tried to grab it, but it went through her fingers.
It was sand.
Perhaps the ocean floor would bury her itself.
~~~
The air was warm, and she was cold. She felt something coarse stuck on her skin, on the palms of her hands. Callista stuck her tongue out and swiped her upper lip, tasting to find out if it was salt. It was not. She let out a little gagging sound when she realized it was more sand, which then led to her coughing her lungs out and water dripping from her mouth.
"Callista!"
She was confused how when her eyes opened, she could only see cracks of light against darkness, but realized it was just the sun shining through the hair that was in her face when someone pushed it away and tucked it behind her ear.
"Callista," Lisa repeated, a little more quietly. "Oh, gods, you're alive. I was so worried- I didn't think I'd gotten all of the water out of your lungs in time! I didn't- I'm sorry- I got most of it, I thought I'd gotten all of it- oh, gods, darling, you're alive!" Tears were willing up in Lisa's eyes, and she brushed a hand against her face to try and wipe them away, but only ended up smearing what was left of her makeup and rubbing more water into her eyes.
"I am?" Callista croaked, embarrassed by how raspy her voice was. "I wouldn't--" She broke off into more coughing. "I wouldn't know any better. I feel dead."
Lisa sniffed, a tiny amused smile pulling at one corner of her mouth. "I promise, you're alive, darling. Meridian and Rodrin are, too, they just haven't woken up yet." She studied Callista's face for a moment, then her smile dropped and more tears started welling up. "This is all my fault," she whispered, the words coming out choked and agonized. "I suggested- I wasn't strong enough, either- you could have died! You could have all died! This is my fault! I'm- I'm so sorry, darling..." She broke off, unable to continue through her tears.
"No. No, Lisa, you did everything you could. We made it and we have you to thank for that. I'm--" A delirious laugh escaped her, and she couldn't help it, when it really hit her that she was alive. There was nothing funny at all about the situation, and yet, it was entirely funny to her at the same time. "I'm not even supposed to die that way."
That didn't seem to be a comfort to Lisa. She rocked back on her heels, pressing one hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. "You could've all died," she mumbled tearily. "You could've all died and it would've been my fault and I would've been... I would've been alone..." She squeezed her eyes closed and buried her face in her hands, breaking down fully into sobs.
Callista wasn't sure what to do when people were crying, but she did her best. She pulled Lisa close to her, letting her tears fall on her already soaked shoulder.
"It's not meant to be that way," she said, confused as to where the conviction in her voice was coming from, but believing in it anyway. "Not for you. Not for me. Not for any of us."
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