fakesurprise:deepwaterwritingprompts:Text: I wake beaten and bruised on the riverbank, to find
fakesurprise:deepwaterwritingprompts:Text: I wake beaten and bruised on the riverbank, to find new armor growing on me like moss. I scream, but it comes out a noise nothing human makes - something unlike the ocean but cold cold cold “Hi!” A boy is crouched down beside me. He is eleven, his grin naked joy. The armour won’t help, not against him, something whispers inside me. Something old/new. “Someone was meany to you so! I helped the river cuz it wanted to help you,” the boy says proudly. I sit up. The moss has sank into my skin like a dream. I am cold. I think I might be cold for a long time. “How? Why?” My voice is almost my own again. “Rivers sometimes remember how to be oceans,” and somehow, because the boy says it, it makes sense. “You needed power. So the river made you armour.” “Armor?”“Actually armour. Rivers like the letter u because it bends.” The boy pulls my to my feet, and somehow that is a hug. “I don’t - I don’t want power.” I don’t want to think of what I might do with power to fuel the anger inside. “It’s okay. It will go away when it’s no longer needed. Power does that.” And the boy grins, to vanish a moment later. I begin the long, slow walk home. I don’t know if anyone sees me. I don’t know what I am to anyone anymore. I wonder what my daughter-in-law will say. If she will make a comment about old age and ice floes. I think she might. I do not know what I will do. (I think the boy would be happy if I smiled.) -- source link