Chapter Text
She can't breathe.
The world is cold and dark. And she feels so small.
A voice sings to her, melodious and gentle, drifting through her ears as if it were trying to reach her very soul. In her hands is the stupid rock that made her fall.
It's her fault. She shouldn't have leaned over the edge of the boat when she saw the silver light’s gleam buried in the water’s depth. But there was something about it, so alluring and strange, she didn't realize how close she was and how far down she’d leaned until it was too late.
She fell in. Swallowed by the sea as it seemed to drag her further down, drawing her nearer to the blasted rock that glowed even brighter, blinding her under the water’s waves.
How could anything shine so bright? Be so beautiful and divine? And why, in the world, is it here? Hiding in the water’s depth?
She reached out to it, fingers slipping around the edges until it was firmly in her grasp. Bringing it to her chest, it glowed brighter. Within her grasp, she tried swimming back to the top, kicking her legs up, but the water refused her.
Again, she tries. Again and again. It was as if a weight had been forcing her back, forbading her to return, keeping her locked in.
Now, her vision is gone, and her head and chest full of water and the cold dark.
Regrets fill her.
She apologizes to her family. She thinks of her father, who had just buried his own mom a few months back, now outliving his daughter and burying her too. Her older brother, freshly turned father with a son, her nephew, who will not remember his aunt, only knowing she'd been foolish enough to go out on the water and fall in. To the friends who had invited her on this boating trip. How it had been a surprise engagement party for her best friend over a decade. She's sorry. She feels stupid and sorry and despite kicking and pushing her body upward, it doesn't matter. The water keeps her prisoner, like a black hole sucking her further and further in.
The desperation sinks into despair and then into reluctant acceptance.
She lets go of herself, and she sinks further down, the glowing stone nestled between her hands.
.
.
.
.
Oh, child whose fate is now intertwined with Arda. How shall you change the song?
.
.
.
She wakes on a beach with a mouth full of sand and kelp wrapped around her legs.
Coughing, she tries to sit up. Everything hurts. Her head feels like it's waterlogged, and her ears are burning. There's a ringing, and she thinks she can hear far too much all at once.
Rubbing a hand against her temple, she tries to come to. On shaky legs, she stands, glancing around.
The sun blinds her. She has to squint until her eyes adjust or else they hurt, burning too. There's the sand. The ocean. More sand. Some trees are a small distance away. And more sand.
Fantastic.
She searches for her phone, knowing it likely won't work, but as she suspects it is gone, likely somewhere in the ocean. Stumbling a bit, she realizes three very strange things.
One, she feels smaller. She stares at her hands, and they're tiny. Small, like a child's, covered in damp sand and kelp.
Two, her clothes are falling off her. They are large, overly so that her shirt was more of a dress that fell to her knees. Her jeans hang around her ankle and seem as though they have expanded in size threefold.
Three, when she touches her body, looking for injuries and signs of pain, she is met with the horrifying realization that her cheeks are soft and squishy, and her jaw is rounded. But worse and most terrifying of all is that her ears are wrong.
Her piercings and earrings have stayed intact, two on one and three on the other, but where the curve of her ear is meant to be, it's elongated. Pointed at the top with soft cartilage, which, when she touches it, she feels something that jolts her. It's not hard, not swollen, or bleeding. But pointed they are.
She falls. A scream escapes her mouth. It's dry and wet at the same time, and she ends up in a coughing fit. Water comes out of her as she heaves.
Dehydration. It has to be, she reasons with herself. Concussion and discombobulation, she thinks.
Still, her clothes size doesn't make sense, nor does smallness of her, but there has to be a logical reason. That reason escapes her. Surely this is all a terrible and strange nightmare. Has to be.
Getting back to her feet, she realizes her shoes are nowhere to be found despite having laced them tightly before heading out on the boat.
Her socks remain, soaked and large, too that she has to yank them halfway up her ankles and flip the hems to keep them up. She wrings out her shirt, and though she tries to put her shorts back on, they fall off, and thus she is forced to go without them. Running her fingers through her hair, she finds it mangled and full of more sand and kelp and whatever else is in the ocean. She ends up slinking it back and pushing it behind her ears as she does a rather ugly and poor-looking braid that sticks out everywhere, but it does its job.
There is nothing as far as her eyes can see, and her eyes seem to see even more than they used to as well, oddly enough.
Ocean? Check.
Sand? Check?
Blue skies? Check?
Some green trees? Check.
More sand? Still a check.
Without much other choice, she begins to walk along the water. Surely there are others nearby, maybe a coastal town or something.