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(Sea in Zulu: Ulwandle)
I KEPT MY EYES GLUED TO THE bright screen.
The ridges and valleys of the reef below ghosted in the night.
The contours of another world where coral replaced trees and fins replaced legs. The water world was as familiar to me as the one above, and I followed the canyons and undersea hillsides as if they knew the way to happiness. As if they could heal me, revive me, and guide me to an existence where evil didn’t exist, where stress and worry, violence and rape didn’t happen.
Gritting my teeth so hard, bottling up the torrenting emotions inside me, I focused on navigating by the ocean floor.
The night sky enveloped us.
The faint lights of the town faded the longer we sailed.
No birds. No people.
Just me and Aslan, riding the sea beneath a gleaming moon.
The conversation from earlier today—God, it feels like decades ago—echoed in my mind.
“You said without the moon and the sea, we would never have met.” He narrowed his eyes.
“Thank goodness for the ay and the deniz then,” I murmured.
“For the luna and the mare,” he whispered, his gaze locking onto mine and making the world drop away.
Those two Latin words swirled in my head, a mantra that I clung to as other memories stalked and scratched.
Occasionally, I checked the moon’s location, using the compass to affirm I followed the right path. As long as I focused on the picture of the reef beneath my fragile feet, I could pretend I was okay.
I could convince myself that I would survive this.
I could lie and say I was fine—
I turned my head and stared at Joel’s grey curtains as Ethan jerked and came. His repulsive body rippled and released in mine, filling the condom. My mind had fractured. Before I was light and bright and brave. Now, I had boxes. Neat and tidy boxes where all my goodness had fled and hidden. All my hopes had scurried and died. All my faith in people crushed into dust.
He rutted into me a final time, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
I’d gone quiet. Still. Shut down.
My instincts had switched into self-preservation, and I blocked it out. I pretended it never happened. I stared at those damn curtains and lied to myself that this was a nightmare, and when I woke up...it wouldn’t be real.
Withdrawing, Ethan sat on his knees between my spread and bound legs. With a grunt, he yanked the condom off.
Tears leaked from my eyes.
A strange new part of me—a sharp and savage, meek and mauled part—flushed with gratitude that he’d worn protection. The thinnest piece of latex had kept me clean, kept me safe.
I hyper-focused on that condom.
It made everything seem a little less...worse.
Shaking my head, I dragged myself back to the starlit sea.
Aslan clung to the railing at the front, his back to me, his face toward the darkness. He trusted me to take him wherever I wanted. He hadn’t come to ask where we were going. He hadn’t tried to take me home. He didn’t speak of police or hospitals or parents.
He trusted me.
