Oceanus: Chapter 15
"I might call him a thing divine, for nothing natural I ever saw so noble." - William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
Chapters 1-5| Chapter 6 |Chapter 7| Chapter 8| Chapter 9|Chapter 10| Chapter 11| Chapter 12|Chapter 13| Chapter 14|
Previously: Balthazar scans for life forms from the bridge of the Demeter. He finds more than he bargained for and must get the survivors back as soon as possible.
Thea lay on the bed listening to the birds singing in the trees outside the woodcutter’s hut. Bright, blinding sunshine peered in through the partially open window. The lake, as always, lay veiled by the morning mist that dampened the air around it. She had drifted between sleeping and waking for hours through the night, overwhelmed with the weight of her own thoughts. Some thoughts were welcomed. Others, not so much.
The darkness of the night terrified her at times as though she were a child again. She would trick herself into following shadows around the room. Other times, she would wake up and not know where she was. She had been alone for the entire time. Alone with nothing but new and demanding contemplations for company. Alone, these persisted and grew into troubling dreams. Many faces appeared before her including a face that she could barely remember. It was a face that looked like hers but she couldn’t touch it. It was too far away.
In her most vivid dream, she floated beneath the lake, looking up at waves of liquid silver and a giant, burning ball of light that she couldn’t reach. Bubbles escaped from her tight lips slowly but they were running out. Her hair floated around her face, clouding her vision. Nothing but the doom of cold, weightless darkness lay beneath her. She gently circled her arms and kicked her bare legs to rise upwards, increasing the intensity. The surface seemed to roll away from her, sweeping from her fingertips as she reached out. She kicked harder, the tension in her muscles throwing her upwards and upwards until finally, she gasped that intoxicating pull of oxygen from the surface and felt the cold grip of air on her bare, wet shoulders. She woke from that dream gasping, sweating and coughing. It felt too real.
In her state of exhaustion, she would drift off again. At times– in other dreams– she would find herself lost on a raft at sea, trying to navigate the black waters of Oceanus in the cold, bleak, ominous night. The sky, merciless in its blanketed clouds, withheld the stars from her in the darkness. Some time would pass as she sat upright on the raft. It was now morning. She would make out the outline of a little girl on the shore, collecting things and placing them in a bag or basket. Thea would call for help as the raft drifted slightly closer on the waves. The child could not hear her. Thea waved and called again. Her voice would not carry across the troubled waters. The little girl walked away.
She woke up trembling, and felt as though she had been brought back from the brink of drowning to death again and again.
Thea wondered if she had ever dreamed before last night.
In the moments that held her between waking and sleeping, her mind led her to memories of Jet. She had seen Jet’s face a thousand times, always feeling that it wasn’t enough. When he had returned to her, four years before, she could barely remember him. This hurt him, as had most of the things she had done or said but he continued to live nearby on the other side of the loch. He had remained an unconditional friend to her when she had none. It was no secret that he despised her father and this realisation baffled her; she had never asked why. Thea accepted it with a child-like innocence, as she had done with everything then.
Her final dream that night had disturbed her most of all. She saw Jet fade away with old age, alone. He sat on the dock, struggling to look up or speak to her. He was so old, so worn and frail as she rowed away from him to the centre of the loch.
He had not noticed the flower crown on her head, assembled with laurels and roses from her own garden. He had not even looked in her direction. She drifted away from him. Unable to breathe, she lay down and silently died in the boat. She could see that Jet hadn’t noticed that she had left his side. She watched her own death from the edge of the lake. Her perfectly formed, youthful corpse lay to rest on a bed of flowers.
The row boat, after some time, eventually found its way back to shore where Jet was grief-stricken. As the old, withered man looked down upon her lifeless face, he returned to his youth instantaneously. He could not see her watching him from the other side of the lake. She saw that she was dead to him and he was all the better for it. That particular dream had left her feeling hollow when she woke.
That morning, when she decided to give up on her fight for sleep, she had stretched, grazing the top of Jet’s pillow with her fingertips. She flinched for a second, as though she had touched it without permission. Intrigued by her own feeling of hesitation, she moved closer to the pillow and inhaled. It smelled of him. His scent delighted her. She held the pillow close to her and reflected on the events of the night before; it left her with a heavy sadness. She treated the symptom with happier thoughts and so the cycle continued from the moment she had first given herself time to think.
Thought is free, she reflected and smiled. She had read and reread his entire collection of books, she liked his smell and enjoyed being in his cabin. Jet Lennox was her favourite person in the entire world. She hated herself for the things she had said the previous night. On reflection, she hadn’t meant any of it. Her eye spied Wuthering Heights on his bookshelf. “I am as cruel as Katherine,” she said to herself and buried her face in the pillow. She thought of all the literary heroines in his books and decided that she did not want to be a Katherine, an Estella or a Delilah. She wanted to prioritise love and give love freely and stubbornly like Jane. She wanted to be an honest and devoted Miranda. She realised that she could be anyone she wanted to be. When she thought of him, the desire to see him and the despondency from his absence scared her.
The familiar thrill she felt when she had kissed him returned to her at the very thought of him. It had taken her by surprise at first and forced her to suppress it. She had lied to him and to herself; the thought of never being able to see him again and tell him caused fresh tears to well up in her already tired and red-rimmed eyes. She sobbed into the pillow. The compulsion to cry was uncontrollable. The logical explanation was nowhere to be seen.
Some time later, Thea reluctantly rose from the bed and lit the stove, heating up some water for tea. While she waited, she splashed her face with cold water, wetting some of her hair as she did so.
As she sat back down on the bed and sipped the tea, she wondered if Jet had been able to find Geraint and the other people. She felt sick, realising that she feared for his safety. Of course, she was concerned for Geraint and the others but she wished to see Jet again above all. She thought of little else. Her mind was growing tired from all the thinking; some muscles in her mind had never been flexed before. She sipped her tea.
As all thoughts did, another led to thoughts of her father. She had read his notes from the previous two days. He had even told her what he had done but she could only hear. Listening had been beyond her at that time.
The timeline of events unravelled before her eyes, starting with the moment she saw Geraint’s shuttle sinking into the lake in the storm her father had summoned.
She was starkly reminded of his limp, drowning body and his pale lips as he lay unconscious in the bed. She hadn’t understood what it all meant. She hadn’t understood why her father was so solemn. She hadn’t understood life and death.
She looked over at the photograph of Shona Lennox. A memory came flooding back to the forefront of her mind: death.
Distracted, she dropped the cup, scalding her hand as she vainly attempted to catch it in mid air. The burn intensified as she watched it with amazement. The chamomile and honey liquid dripped away onto her skirt, cooling her palm with the breath of the chilled morning air. She could not recall the last time that she had been injured, if ever. The sting caused her hand to twitch but she could not bring herself to move. It was as though she had never seen her own hand before. It was white, delicate and as beautiful as she had ever hoped to have for a hand. She raised the other one to admire them together. “What lovely things hands are.” she said. She looked down at her feet, too. She loved them as well. They were positioned next to the small cup that she had dropped onto the bare wood floor. She knelt down to pick it up and retrieved a towel for the spilled tea.
As she was dabbing the spill with the towel, she saw that some had spilled on to a stack of journals under the bed. Rather than ignore them and go about her business, she felt the urge to drag them out onto the bed and read them intently. The journal at the bottom of the stack was dated 2298. The journal at the top was dated 2311. She recognised her father’s handwriting. A paralysing chill shot up her spine. She began to read.
Chapters 1-5| Chapter 6 |Chapter 7| Chapter 8| Chapter 9|Chapter 10| Chapter 11| Chapter 12|Chapter 13| Chapter 14|
Thea shines in the chapter. Great character development.
I think this is one of the best chapters so far! Great description of Thea's state of mind and awakening.