Honestly, I knew so little about everything around me that I didn’t want to start making assumptions. Oh! But I was supposed to keep record of the strange things that happen here and around me.

Well, if things are changing then I wonder what it is that is causing the changes. I am going to stop thinking so hard and go back to relaxing.

I want to remake baths into being a thing of comfort and not of.. Blargh, no this is exactly what I don’t want. I scrub shampoo into my hair vigorously as if to scrub away all negativity and all bad thoughts. I sink back down into the water to let it clear out.

“Hey there, you want to be careful not to fall in. The river here moves quickly and you could get really hurt if you fall in you know.”

“Oh, I didn’t think about it. I should stop hopping across the river on these rocks then huh?”

“Yes, that would be great. I came over here to ponder and get away from homework and what do I find? Some stupid kid hopping back and forth on rocks trying to break her silly little head.”

“Hey, I’m not a kid!” I shout and almost start pouting but then realize pouting is something that a kid would do, and I would be proving him right. I was too clever for that. I make my way across to the side of the river that I should be on.

“Why were you doing that anyways?”

“Because I want to learn better balance of course. A dancer is supposed to be poised, at all times. Also, I am not allowed to come back into the house until it gets dark. Which I didn’t mind because I like it outside, it’s quiet, there is no yelling. I didn’t think about how dangerous jumping on the rocks could be.”

“Your parents suck then. Here come sit with me.”

He looked about my age, so I sat down next to him. “Do you know what else takes skill?” he asked. I became wary. What if he has bad intentions?

“Skipping rocks!” he says and throws one out across the water. I watched and it looked like it was flying. It skipped once, twice... Four times! I wanted to be able to do that as well.

I pick up a rock and try to throw it. He reached over to me and moves my had on the rock.

“You have to hold it like this in order to let it fly.” He told me.

I nod and flick it. It was beautiful as it bounced and skipped across the water. I smile at him. He blushed a bit and clears his throat.

“That’s how it’s done.”

We sit in silence for a little while just quietly thinking. When I decided to break the silence, I turn to him and say. “My name is Aurora. What’s yours?”

He opens his mouth about to respond when my phone goes off. “Aurora get back home now. Where the hell have you been, I looked everywhere for you! You stupid brat, I shouldn’t have to look for you.”

His shouting made me scared, but I knew that it would get worse the longer I was away. I knew he had been drinking, I hated this. We had only moved here a few weeks ago and I wanted to make a friend here.

“I’m Alex.” He says. “I hope I get to see you again.”

I nod, look around the ground and pick up the smoothest rock that I was able to find, and I slip it into my pocket before running home.

Well at least that had started out as a good memory. I will take that as a win. I nod and look around me. I absentmindedly put more repairing conditioner in my hair, it is supposed to do good things if you just let it sit for a while.

I sit and let my vision blur with a few more tears. Why couldn’t I have more control over my mind. If I did then I wouldn’t be worried about having bad memories, and letting the depression pull me down into the black.

I would be able to enjoy life more, laugh louder and I’m sure that colors would even look more vibrant. Or that’s what I’ve heard at least.

As my mood drops my eyes fall closed again but this time it does not feel like a choice at all. I try to fight and fight hard. It shouldn’t be so hard to fight, but it was. I feel myself sliding back into the water.

The water is so black and dark. I am soon completely submerged in its icy chill. It had been warm, hadn’t it? Or had it always been so cold?

It felt as though my blood was cooling, growing sluggish and starting to freeze. My veins had turned to ice, or maybe all of me was made of ice now. I wonder if that thought scares me?

As I am thinking that maybe I wasn’t all that scared it felt as though there was something wrapping around my neck. Something strong, long tendrils easily wrapping entirely around my throat, and it was pulling me down!

I hit the bottom hard. It holds for a moment, but shatters into fragments of glass. I thought for a moment that I was watching visions of my life, but that wasn’t it at all. Each shard held one of the hopes that I had for the future, some of the things that I had wanted.

I reach out trying to seize them, but they slice into my hands. Even then, they still slip through my fingers disappearing and fading into smoke. I don’t even have time to register them.

I try to move, to struggle, to get back to the surface. My arm barely responds, moving only an inch or two before creaking to a stop. I could feel my blood starting to expand as it froze. It pierced through my veins, small red shards sticking out of my arms.

More tendrils reach out of the darkness. At first, I can only feel them as they further wrap around me. I could no longer turn my head. I wanted to know what it was, but then I saw it.

My mind shudders, unable to comprehend what I was seeing. I desperately wanted to close my eyes but had lost even that ability. Vast tendrils came out of nowhere, shifting, moving, somehow being in more than one place at once.

It blinked, oh gods how it blinked so many times. As countless eyes appeared across the tendrils. One by one they shifted to stare at me, through me. It felt like I was fading as if they were somehow eating into me. My past, my futures, me! Fragmenting and shattering, fading into smoke.

And… It was gone, as if it never was. Something else was there now.

‘Why?’ I want to say but I can’t for fear of breathing in the water. Was I even in water anymore? It had begun to feel as though I was in oil.

I was freezing and being encased in it. Eventually I would need to breathe and then I would die here, and no one would know what happened to me. I feel the grip tighten and I fight and open my eyes to see my enemy.

It was dark like the inky blackness. When it opens its mouth as if to devour me, I see all of my blackest thoughts and worst memories in there. I feel it moving closer to me, this thing I call depression, this thing that sits on my chest and tells me that I am not good enough. I just didn’t realize that I could feel it like this.

I start to panic, thinking about all of this and feeling like my body is too heavy to lift when...

“Ouch!” I exclaim, back to sitting. Did I fall asleep and have a nightmare? And what hurt? I shake off my disorientation and see a pair of bright yellow eyes staring at me.

“Bastet bites you to bring you back. Bastet likes you, Bastet saves you. Anubis stayed in your room because he is a boy and can’t stay in here.” She tips her head as if she was trying to think of something. “Oh yeah. He also stayed out there to calm down your ghost. He felt a shift in the cabin and became scared for you.”