Panic flooded me, my heart racing, fear gripping at my heart. Help me!
My lungs were starting to ache, my face freezing in the cold water, my limbs moving less quickly, my frantic legs starting to have trouble treading water, as I dropped a little from the surface.
No! I thrust hard to the surface, bashing my head against the ice, but at least propelling myself forward and reigniting my freezing limbs. I have to keep going! I can’t freeze! I have to—mentally! I can reach out to him mentally!
I opened myself, the way I had practiced, hoping Cartari would be thinking the same thing, and I reached out to him, trying to feel his mind.
“Zaya! Zaya!” It was an explosion of his thoughts, a fearful impression of exigency. “Open yourself to me! Tell me where you are!”
“Cartari! I’m here!” I flooded him with the fear and cold and struggle I was feeling. His mind rebelled against my intensity a moment, then accepted it and pushed back the same intensity. Lights flurried in my mind and I wondered if I was getting hypoxic, but it seemed to be coming from the connection with him.
“Tell me where you are!”
“The current is taking me south in the pond!” My lungs were straining severely. Their ache was starting to spread to other capillaries, pain taking over my fingers, my feet, my face. “I can’t see your shadow any more! It’s too fast! I can’t breathe, Cartari, I can’t breathe!”
“Just calm your mind. Latch onto me. Feel me. I am with you. I will find you. Keep talking to me.”
Cartari’s thought was overflowing with a soothing emotion, with a gentle flow of care, concern, of feelings of safety and hope. I knew he was just doing it to manipulate my panic, but I latched onto the feelings and focused on our connection. Lights burst in my brain, seeming to warm me, letting my legs function better again, as I had dropped a few feet from the surface. I pumped hard to get back to the top as I saw a jagged piece of ice hanging down in the current. I grabbed to it as hard I could. It allowed me to be just a few inches from the surface.
“I’m holding to a piece of ice beneath the surface. Please find me. Please find me.” I was ashamed of the whimper in my thought.
“I’m coming for you, Zaya. Hold on. Stay focused on me, on our connection. Feel us.”
I stared up at the ice’s underside. Its crackle was beautiful, blue, and silver, and golden in the sunlight. The light traced rays out onto the surface, a sharp contrast with the chilly, cool, dark waters in which I swam.
A bubble escaped from my lips. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer… just not any longer…
“Stay with me, Zaya! I’m almost there!”
And there he was, his shape looming, a shadow of refracted colors, just over me. He knelt down over where I was gripping the ice.
“I’m going to break the ice and get you out of there!”
Cartari began smashing the ice near me with the hilt of his knife. Slamming, shuddering, splintering its sheen. Cracks began to shiver out from where he was impacting the ice.
My legs slowed. My fingers were too cold to clench the ice much longer. Another bubble escaped my lips…
“Zaya, focus on me.” A flood of warmth rushed into me from his thoughts, wrapping me with care, concern, something that felt like guilt, and almost a sensation of love…? How could he love me? He didn’t know me. He was beautiful like a stream, flowing into the woods, but never out again, because it couldn’t find its source and then it would get lost down by the docks or flounder in the mines because I wouldn’t know where to look for it…
“Zaya! Zaya! I’m almost there! Look up at me! Look up! Focus on me!”
I clung to the ice and shook away the thoughts of hypoxia. I forced myself to look up, every movement a fight against incredibly cold sensation resounding in every cell of my body, and smiled at the charzbos as he gave one last heavy heaving blow to the ice. It smashed apart and his fist went through to reach down into the water, gripping at my hand, just as it slipped on the jagged sliver I clung to. He pulled me over and to the hole. My lips burst through it and I gasped in air.
Oxygen flooded back through me and I rocked my head back into the water, nearly drowning myself, if Cartari hadn’t still had a hold on my forearm. He was still raking at the ice with the hilt of his knife, but I at least could be getting air.
Finally, there was room to squeeze my body out from the water, and he pulled me up, effortlessly, and held me tight to him, and then we were flying, literally, flying, as he used his telekinesis, over the pond, over the snowbanks, and back into the cabin.
I could hardly register what happened next, I only knew the fire was flaring larger than he had made it before, my teeth were chattering so bad I thought they would roll out of my head, and Cartari was stripping me naked. I only realized he was naked, too, once we were fully under the towel mound, supplemented by his coat, and he was clutching me to his chest, holding my head tightly against him, my heart thudding against his. My hands were tucked in between his arms and his sides and my feet were pressed tightly between his legs. He was so warm… I was so cold…
I don’t know how long we laid there, but he was continually talking, telling me soothing things, telling me stories about Bristola, myths, legends, childhood antics, pinching me if I ever seemed to be falling asleep.
Sensation started to, painfully, come back
