The boys and the boat

Nov 28, 2021 18:43


She stood at the edge of the water, wiggling her feet, the sand and water filtering through her toes with each wave reaching the shoreline.

Her parents were behind her, and she had been told not to go too far, they were chatting, having fun, distracted, but she had no intent to go too far, she was still in front of them, could still hear the sound of them laughing.

Water still held an element of fear. Without her wings, (the inflatable arm bands, almost the same size as she was) she knew she could not go in the water and she would never disobey her parents orders.

She did not see the danger, she wasn't even misbehaving, just giggling as a particularly strong wave managed to make it to her knees. She stepped to one side, playfully running away from the emboldened waves.

…..suddenly she was under the water, the ground disappearing under her, before she could even scream out for help she was swallowed up, disappeared

There was no concept of time.

She looked up, the surface of the water was strangely peaceful, beautiful. The light from above reflected the sun in pretty kaleidoscope style patterns across the surface. She reached her arm up towards that reflection, wondering if she could affect the pattern with her fingers. There was no fear, just curiosity and wonder at the beauty of the flickering of light above her.

She would never know how long she spent looking, gazing at the beauty above her, but out of nowhere she noticed the shadow of a boat, an inflatable boat she had seen on the beach. Its shadow broke the flowing and rippling patterns, breaking her wonder. A hand then reached down, breached the surface of the water, swiftly down towards her. Calmly she reached up towards it; still no fear, just awareness that she did not belong down here, this beauty and peace was not meant for her..

Pressure of a hand around her wrist, a sudden jerking movement pulling her up, breaching the water's surface… the brusk and harsh sound of a German accent, young boys, anxious, frightened, relieved?

Still no fear.

She remembered the boy, and his companion, they pulled her up into their boat.

She tried to tell people about them

… but they didn’t exist, she was later told as doctors swarmed over her, there were no boys, she slipped for a second after running away from her parents, rescued by her desperate and terrified mother. She knew not to dispute this. This was the truth of it from her parents.

Yet she closed her eyes for many nights following this day and pictured the beautiful peace of the light reflecting on the surface of the water. She would see the colour of the boat, the pitch and speed of the words from the German boys, cutting through that peace. She told herself that this was not something she could forget, and she would remember those boys from the safety of her imagination, because they were not real - her parents told her so.

The memory lives on.
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