I Didn't Cross Off Any Prompts Because They All Kinda Apply? Like He's Drowning But That Definitely Is Deliberate Drowning - Tumblr Posts

Try, Try Again

Augusnippets day 7: waterboarding | drowning | choking

Word count: 498

Trigger warnings: child abuse, depictions of drowning, symptoms like vomiting(?)

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Aristaeus only realizes that the hand in his hair has yanked him up when he’s choking on air for long, agonizing seconds. Water in his lungs, water in his stomach—all of it comes spluttering out, dragging pain behind it like yanking hooks along his esophagus. He heaves, and he is wretched—

“I remain convinced that you are not taking this seriously, morseling.”

—and he has failed. Again.

The hand in his hair tightens, just a bit; in response, all his breathing cuts off for a terrifying moment, before in a great rush, water floods out his mouth and nose, splattering into the river. The force of it makes him grasp at the shingle around him in weak, desperate movements, but when he can finally inhale, it comes clean, free of any damp rattle in his lungs, though it rasps in his abused throat. Teacher is merciful, even after his many failures.

“I am,” Aristaeus croaks, “I swear, I am.” His next words are practiced, and resonate with the scorching, acidic mass rooted deep into his chest: “This is within nature, so it is within mine.”

He cuts it off there, as he’s learned. Anything more sounds like begging to Teacher—the divine, even pale, reaching imitations like him, do not beg, as Teacher says.

“And yet,” Teacher says, “the lesson remains unlearned.”

Her hand in his hair pulls him back, back, back, and his breath shudders as the arch of his spine lets him meet Her eyes, pebbles for irises surrounded by mossy sclera. Her face is set in statuesque, forbidding disapproval, as always.

No mouth is needed to speak the tongue of the gods, only a will to be heard, and so Her lips remain sealed as She proclaims, “You will stay under for as long as it takes for you to learn how to breathe.”

The sentence nearly makes his hands fly up (to grasp at her hand and plead? To rip it from his head?); he stills them, and they hover somewhere above his knees. He knows She doesn’t mean what they’ve been doing so far. The notion makes him start trembling.

“Teacher, I am mortal. Prolonged drowning will kill me,” he says. She needs the reminder, occasionally—their existences are so far apart. Maybe ….

“It will not be drowning if you are breathing,” Teacher says, implacable. “I can expel water from your body in the river as easily as out of it. You will learn, splinterling, or you will stay.”

Aristaeus knows it’s coming. It doesn’t make the push forward into the water any less jarring, or the shingle wrapping around him to keep him under any less frightening. Her hand is still in his hair—he is trapped utterly in Her power, and it’s a cold comfort to know he won’t die, no matter how painful.

As he breathes in, tries to convert the water to magic he can sustain himself on, fails again, and starts to seize, he hopes he’ll learn Her lesson quickly.