I was sinking, and sinking.

I wanted to scream, but knew that if I opened my mouth water would flow in and kill me even quicker than it was going to.

Weren't people supposed to float?

It felt like weights were tied to my ankles, pulling me down faster and faster with every passing second.

I flailed around wildly, desperately.

My eyes were shut tightly, but it made no real difference.

I was going to die.

I had thought it would happen before, but now I was completely certain.

Loralai wasn't going to come diving after some miserable girl she had just met an hour ago. It wasn't going to happen.

I'd heard her calling me an angst-y teenager. She didn't care about me. She would probably be happy without me.

Everyone always was.

I hit the ground underneath the water. I felt unsettled dirt cloud up around me.

I couldn't hold my breath much longer. I was definitely going to die.

I was straining just to keep my eyes open, my brain so deprived of oxygen it couldn't keep me awake.

I felt something grab onto me, just as I lost consciousness.

~~~<><><><><>TIME SKIP<><><><><>~~~

I woke up, lying on what was probably a cot.

How familiar, I reflected. I felt like I had been here before, but where...?

Sarcasm isn't helping anything right now, Isla.

How are you even alive right now...?

Maybe you are dead.

Maybe this is death.

Maybe death isn't anything different from life, you just get to go through the same he--

"So you're finally awake. Thought you died for a second there."

It was Loralai's voice that reassured me I was definitely not dead.

"I thought so too," I said, in a slightly sour tone.

"No thank you's?"

I took in a deep breath, trying to calm myself.

This...

Loralai, really knew how to get on someone's nerves.

But, I realized, she had actually dived down into the water to save my life. So I really couldn't be very mad at her.

Loralai took on a rare serious tone as she said, "You... You don't see things... do you?"

"No." It definitely took her long enough to realize it. It seemed to me that everyone else knew instantly. I was beginning to think she would never figure it out.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing at all."

"What's it like?"

"It's not like I have anything to compare it to..."

"Born that way?"

"Yes."

Loralai moved on from the subject of my blindness.

"Well, now that you're actually holding a conversation with me, what's your name? You never told me yours."

"Isla."

"Isla Kunay?!"

"So you know the story."

"You're... Isla Kunay... I'm sorry."

Two words I never thought I'd hear Loralai say. She didn't strike me as the type of person to apologize for something. Let alone something she had literally no control over whatsoever.

"You don't even know the whole story. Don't be sorry."

Loralai continued apologizing anyways, "For... your mother. Your father... Her. I can't imagine..."

Her. She must mean Zaila.

"So you didn't live there," I concluded.

"Zaila's City? No, I didn't."

I fell silent. She seemed to remember that I told her she didn't know the whole story, and asked, "How could it be any worse? What's the rest of the story...?"

I looked upwards pointlessly, and sighed.

I breathed out, shaking my head slowly.

"Well..." I started.

Before pouring my heart out. My story.

Zaila's city falling, and I had been left to die.

Adyson saving me by taking my hand.

Grace sacrificing herself.

Me overhearing Adyson wishing she'd let me die.

...Nicholis telling me that I could trust him...

Me and Adyson fighting.

Nicholis kicking me out to die in the woods.

Zaila finding Nicholis and Adyson, forcing them to find me.

Zaila beating me almost to death while Nicholis watched to save his sister.

Nicholis escaping, taking Adyson and leaving me to die.

Zaila then leaving me to die.

Loralai finding me in misery.

Now.

...Only as I explained myself to someone else did I realize how many times I had been left for dead and managed to get out alive.