Chapter 1: Icky falls.

There is no worse flop than the belly flop against the ocean. And even if you’re too hurt to know it, you feel the flop breaking over your back, all those bones cracking and breaking and there’s this warmth crackling on your skin from the burnt wings and smoking wax and the slap of cool dark ocean below and you think, okay. I guess this is it. 

Why did I put my flute over by that rose bush? I had been looking for that thing for months now, and that is the amazing thing about hitting your head hard enough: you can remember where you put things. You imagine what it would have been like if you had remembered it earlier, playing those mean streaks of flute only you knew could swoon a girl with the gap between her two front teeth named Ariadne. 

But no. 

I have to be hit hard enough in the head to remember something important like that. And nearly dead. 

Or, I guess, dead. Dying?

The worse of the flop and the burning and the slapping and far deep black of the ocean is a mere flash and then, it all feels like the coming of bad sleep.

And then, in the dark, I feel the rocks scrape against my chest, and the wash of water and jagged rocks and something is dragging me, my feet limp and skinning the sand, the rock, the sand and rock and shell and slick wet black and red rock and they’re tracing lines like cart wheels, and I know there’s shelves of rocks and sand bright like clouds and ocean, ocean everywhere and blood and stink of birds. I think, and when I open my eyes fully, I see moonlight and teeth. 

Then it comes for me, and I feel the bite, the lick of the tongue like tracing three steps, and then there’s this new heat, burn of my neck, and it goes, explodes, up to my cheeks and up to my hair, and then it's all dark for a moment, and then I taste smoke and copper on my lips and tongue, and there’s this moment when I swear I can feel my heartbeat in my teeth.

If you forgot the Prologue.

Reminder of what I'm doing.