Time was a funny thing. When one is happy it flies to end it. When someone suffers, however, it likes to linger and relish in the experience. They claim that natural forces do not have sentience, but is this so with time? The flow only a concept in your head? Or is time a sadistic spirit who wishes to enhance the pain felt by the souls of yonder? Today was no exception to this theory.
For the clock not even a day passed. But for Lena…..time couldn't move and neither could she from her room. Every second she looked at the clock and it seemed to be going backward if anything. From seven in the morning, she awoke in expectation. Last night was haul night. She and her uncle would go out into the nets and mark the oyster nets for them to come around and haul them up with a crane just later. They always started at midnight and were finished at four in the morning for a crane aboard a vessel to draw them before sunrise. She waited in the living room the moment the clock ticked seven.
When it struck eight she thought the truck may have been slow. At ten she believed that he was out selling it in the market without her, maybe she'd spin by later? At midday Dynamo returned to find her waiting endlessly, going through her job applications and accounts. Something was strange at two when they called the bar and he wasn't there. Wilson's oxygen tank had a sensor on it along with his suit. If he was running low on oxygen or his suit didn't feel any muscle movements his location would be sent to a recovery team…..but Lena accepted the fact at dusk. Six in the afternoon. "Uncle isn't coming home, is he?"
"Don't say that," Dynamo spat. He sat upon her windowsill with his legs pressed against the roof and arms stuck in the window frame. His head was still inside, "So, what's that by the way?" Dynamo pointed directly forward from his perspective to the framed photo on her desk. Out of all the clutter, he saw something in it that the others didn't. "Tell me about it."
"Huh?" Lena eyed the picture and recalled memories made. How quickly time flowed that day, "Nothing special really, Uncle took that picture a while ago for this sports thing we had back in school," it was a long time evident by how young Lena appeared. Not even her current height with a rounder face and shorter dark hair. Dressed in a track outfit covered in mud with an orange-haired gentleman choking under her arm, "I was in the relay but on the last phase Patrick but he ended up slipping all over the place," she smiled for the first time in a few hours. "I was in the lead too! He said I kicked him down, can you believe that!? Go ask him-"
He wasn't around to be asked. Neither was the one who took the photograph in the first place. Just erased off the globe. Nobody knew where they went or could be in the slightest. Zenith took Patrick away from her, "If they take him to then-" Her words stuttered. Dynamo saw the steam exit her orifices... which wasn't normal for any magic user. Something calmed her with a forced approach. Rote's image prevented it from going wild; sedation. She struggled to roar out. A muzzle of nails pinned her mouth shut.
"Don't make me repeat myself," Dynamo sighed, "Come on, you know where he's supposed to be, right?" with both hands out he slipped through the window entirely, "Some lake right? Let's go looking instead of sulking then,"
"Yeah….I guess I waited long enough," every now and then Wilson would take a while to return, it was never anything new. Since Lena went to the academy for some time he grew less efficient without her for the trips, "You're right, I wasted too much time, the lake he rents is east of here near a moss patch- follow the wall and we'll be there in twenty minutes flat."
That was all Dynamo needed before pulling his hired help upon his back to jet off, "East huh….I came from there this morning," this didn't sit well in his gut. If the man he met with yesterday also met her uncle then trouble was there for sure. Especially in the ocean.
Dynamo wasted no expense to get her across. With a bounce taking the shingles off the neighbor's roof his gas propelled him further for a more or less glide. A few bounces on the ground for the descend with added weight, "So, you came to this place a lot as a kid?" he made small talk to pass the time.
Lena nodded, gripping him by the shoulders with eyes straight ahead, "Yeah, on haul days we'd go out at midnight every month and then go sell on the fish market that used to be on the port…..was on the port," every memory of good trailed with a scorpion's tail. A sigh left her breath.
"Oh yeah oysters right, you guys just did oysters alone or anything else?" Dynamo kept pace with the conversation, "I'm more of a crab guy myself- sensors go wild for the stuff."
Lena was too focused on the road ahead to give a coherent answer. Dynamo's stomps against the cobblestone soon devolved from loud clangs to virtually nothing due to the muddy change of terrain. A few stones remained here for some to walk on, "Mostly. He used to have twice the number of trawlers on the ocean floor further out in the sea before the chum fest, when he went to check them one day the nets were completely destroyed," there was scorn in the back of her throat escaping through pinched eyes. "Some fucker who couldn't catch their own broke and stole his probably."
She was really pissed. Moreso than the first of his pools was in sight but his boat wasn't. With a strong thud, Dynamo landed on the edge, "Ah shit-" the slope wasn't sturdy for his mass. Mud got into his legs and water up to his waist before he stabilized himself. Lena hopped off his shoulders just in time, "Shit…..I just cleaned those too" he whined and crawled back up at the same time with the ends decorating his shirt too, "No...Lucki wanted to see me wear this one too," he sobbed at the sight of his ruined shirt and futile attempts to pull off the clumps. "Screw this, you find anything?"
He decided to go in shirtless, laying it in the sun to dry on the rocks. While he did that, Lena had her eyes on another thing. Plugged into the ground was a white labeled bottle of beer, "This is the type uncle drinks-" she turned around not expecting to see him like that. He looked so soft, not really any defined muscles, "You...don't have nipples?"
"Yeah? And?" Dynamo brushed it off. Careful he was to each step nearing the slop to attain the bottle.
"If he's not here, then maybe on the lower pools?" with Lena's question in the air they went for it. With the rogue unit's weighted nature it didn't take much for him to enter each lake for a moment to see the oysters alone; wiping off all the excess mud and slurping few that fit through the gaps. One after the next and a sinking feeling bloomed in Lena's heart. The last of the nets beyond all of the duckweed was the deep-sea trawlers. Going down the sloping riverside all Lena could do was wait on the side of the waterslide carved into mother nature. The ground was coated in stones and moss that were harsh to bare feet; though bare was better for some grip.
She held on to a few branches and pointed the distance for her boss to nosedive into. Needless to say, she was still uneasy about everything. She could only wait for him now. With folded legs, the ground became a resting spot with the rogue stones pushed about. Every detail was absorbed by her peripherals. Trees that surrounded her with roots like vines dipping into the sea; she could see the pulses of life as they filtered the salt out of the water. Every leaf blew ferociously in gentle winds. The chirps of birds that ruled the winds like few others did accompanied the splashes and rich scent of salts burning the skin. No detail escaped her.
Rustling of shrubs and vines by foreign instincts. It would be some time before Dynamo resurfaced. Strider was too busy working and others wouldn't pick up a call. That Tome wasn't friendly either. For the first time in years, Lena was truly alone.
It ate away at her. Scrapped at her.
'Don't get your hopes up' it said
'Zenith is efficient, they're done for' it reminded her again and again. The burning feeling in her heart clouded judgment. Her teeth bared as her forehead met the ends of a tree time and time again until the thoughts stopped. Blood left her mouth; the color of her forehead now. It was hot to the touch. The blood vanished the instant it touched the ground. Her hands couldn't move. The fire inside burnt her insides trying to break free as before. Torch the world. Immolate before it's too late. It screamed at her again and again trying to break free. But it couldn't, for what was rage to the discipline of a god himself. She drew her bow.
Back on her feet, she placed one foot directly in front of the next. The string was pulled back in the traditional style with a bolt searing her fingers like the devil within. It was calming to release all of it at once into a sea. Bolt after bolt, draw after draw. Her reserves of power never dulled like a goblet that flowed forever. She drew a picture in the sea with the lines tho it evaporated too quickly for her to see. Lena couldn't stop. This was a relief to her.
"Hey!" a voice rose from the sea. She turned to face it and pulled upon her string at the same time, "You need to get some people….." the left of Dynamo's eye went orange with the bolt almost entering his lense.
"Oh! Sorry I was trying to blow off some steam…" she was apologetic, covering her hands and retracting her weapon the same.
"Never mind that! Get a line to Lucki right now and tell her get as many soldiers as she can right now," Dynamo spoke with conviction. "There's something way bigger down there….that ravine."