On the solitary beach lay the body of a young girl, at first glance one wouldn't think her alive until she started to let out small shallow breaths. Her lungs were filled with salty sea water, her skin covered in a thin layer of sand, her hair and clothes were wet and she was shivering from lying in a dump puddle of sand as the current softly swept at her prone body.
When Xanthippeia fluttered open her eyes the first thing she saw was the bright full moon hovering high over her body. She tried to get up but a massive wave of pressure came from her abdomen sending her into a coughing spasm, she could feel the water blocking the air in her chest so in one move she propped herself up and began dry-heaving to vomit the water out.
This was one of the most painful things she had ever been through; it felt like a giant was pressing down on her chest with his size fifty shoe, just trying to crush the life out of her. After heaving three times unsuccessfully on the fourth all the seawater in her throat and lungs seemed to pour out of her like lava shooting out of a volcano.
When she finally managed to breathe in some crisp night air she tried to focus her eyes and look around but once again she was all alone. A thought occurred to her to look up and she realised that she had spent the whole night on this beach and that it was probably dawn by now and that her parents would be worried sick.
She got up slowly and carefully and started trudging up to her house slightly uphill. She only had to walk for a few more minutes and she would be home free but the initial shock that she just survived a drowning started to take its toll on her body so she had to sit down halfway on a nearby rock as fatigue set in.
After taking in a few more deep breaths she started up the little hill again and the first thing she noticed when she was in view of her house was that her parents' bedroom light was on and that meant her mom was most likely getting ready for work. That was the worst possible time for her to walking around the house drenched and trembling, she thought to herself but it didn't matter because she was too tired and cold to wait till her mom left to go in.
So she softly opened the gate to the backyard and the back door and tried to navigate from the kitchen to the stairs. Xanthippeia finally managed to close the back door behind her as silently as she possibly could, she turned around to see her mom descend the stairs towards the kitchen and stop, before she could avoid being seen her mom called over to her and turned the light switch on the wall. Her mom was dressed in her usual pink scrubs and white lab coat, ready to go with her handbag in tow.
Doctor Stella Castiano expressed her pure albeit sleepy confusion on her face to see her daughter looking a mess in the kitchen at this very early hour.
"Hey mom, did you sleep well?" Xanthippeia tried to make useless small talk through chattering teeth.
"What is going on? Why are you wet? And what the hell are you doing sneaking in here like some cat burglar Xan?" she was stern and Xanthippeia knew there was no believable explanation she could come up with on the spot to get out of this one.
She had to finesse Stella and it had to be a good enough one because her mom would be pissed if she found Xanthippeia went for a night swim and almost died. Her mom would rant and rave about her irresponsible behaviour, her complete disregard of how her death would impact the rest of the family and most importantly how people would say she is a terrible parent for letting her child leave the house in the middle of the night.
Whenever she yelled or lectured Xanthippeia, her mom had a habit of always making everything about what a terrible mom she was because when she had kids, unlike the rest of her friends she decided to have a full-time career as a paediatric surgeon.
A big part of Stella's guilt was that she left to go to work at around four AM every day and got back around eight or later so she never spent much time at home and had missed a lot of monuments occasions in her children's lives. Even with all that Xanthippeia never once blamed her mom for having noble and time-consuming aspirations. In fact she kind of looked up to her in that sense but there was no way she could ever admit that because her mom's guilt sometimes worked to her advantage when she slyly needed to get out of punishment like now.
"Honestly mom, do you really want to know where I've been and what I've been doing all night?" she could see the vein on her mom's forehead was about ready to pop but she buckled down on the classic guilt trip.
"I mean I could explain but I'm tired and drenched and I bet you don't really have time to listen to this long story. Didn't you say you couldn't talk to me last night because you had to prepare for a massive surgery? I would hate to keep you from work mom. We'll talk later at dinner, you know if you actually get home in time tonight." Xanthippeia didn't even have to wait for a response, she knew she had her mother exactly where she wanted her and proceeded to climb the stairs.
She opened her bedroom door and stood behind to listen to her mom leaving. As soon as she heard to car drive out of the driveway she sat down on the floor and started to feel a little bad about emotionally blackmailing her mom like she did but she didn't have time to dwell on it.
She was beyond exhausted and could barely think straight anymore. She went into the bathroom to wash the sand and saltwater off of her body. After that, she put on her very warm unicorn onesie and got into bed but was a little worried if she would get any sleep because her thoughts were all over the place. Fortunately, her body started to warm and she found herself falling into a restless sleep.
There was nothing about what had occurred these last few hours that could be explained in one single concise thought. All she knew was feeling comforted by the feel of the water that had engulfed her, the familiar voice that lured her like a siren song and the sudden flood of foreign energy flowing inside her veins.