Wanderlust (Olkhon Island | Baikal Lake, Siberia)

[Thalia]

This morning, in summer’s sun, the water had been effortlessly clear. It rippled cool against her skin, washing clean the shore’s doubts and worries. For a time, at least. She had always loved to swim, though even in England they had never lived by the coast. Oxford did rise up from the meeting of two rivers, though. Growing up her father had taken her and Alyin punting in the Cherwell most summers. Skinned knees and knotted hair peppered reminisces of riverside adventures. She’d had a good childhood. The memories drifted, but she let them go without delving too deep.

It was cold in the lake now; colder than she’d expected, and she revelled in the not thinking. Water parted like silk. Sound muffled. Oblivion beckoned.

Eventually her face broke the surface with a grinning gasp. She twisted, hair spreading in loops and coils that tickled gently against the bare skin of her arms, and slowly she searched the horizon until she reoriented herself on the rock. Wide eyes stared up to find dying light caught on its edges. When had it gotten so dark? She realised the first stars had begun to peek shy above her head, or maybe winked disapprovingly down at her carelessness. Not a single soul in the world knew where she was right now. If there really was a creature in this lake, she was at its mercy. A shiver tingled her skin. Beneath her trailing fingers the water was inky dark, impenetrable.

Plenty of things scared Thalia, but not usually the ones that were supposed to. Flesh and blood and impossibly breathing drawings born to life had terrified her until Patricius’s no nonsense words made it seem a trifling concern. He’d blinked out of her life almost as soon as he’d entered it, gone before she’d acclimatised to the new way of thinking. Not that she suspected he would have ever easily weathered her gregarious manner. Thalia didn’t easily fit into the confines of a box. Even kissing the ring had been a difficult enough conformity, though for him she had done it.

The thought of the unknown beneath her feet, though? Miles and miles of unspeakable depths? That only filled her with a kind of wonder. Swimming at night, alone, in a strange country? Well, perhaps she hadn’t thought the safety of that one the whole way through, but right now she was only in awe of the immensity all around her, and the solitude, and the sound of the water and her own breathing. She swam close enough to press her hand against the stone like she expected a heartbeat. The river in Estonia and the secrets it divulged made her believe she wasn’t just crazy, but Baikal hoarded its answers in silence. If there even were any to be found here. Maybe it was like Patricius said, and it was only the question itself that was beautiful.

She breathed quiet, pressed her head against her hand where it rested against the rock. Aylin’s accusations bothered her more than she thought they would, even though they were expected. Even Patricius’s abandonment circled her thoughts with more tenacity than she really understood. She hadn’t told either of them she was looking for a creature that looked to be plucked from the pages of a story book. Not even Nox knew that. Truth was Thalia believed it was real even without having laid her own eyes upon it, like she suddenly realised she accepted everything in her sketchbooks must be. In the solitude of the vast waters she admitted that maybe it was less proof she sought and more connection; because despite the tentacles and scales, her features were so very human. The emotion of it tugged so strongly. And maybe it was better not to even ask why.

Guided by the rock, which plunged deep beneath the surface, Thalia slipped back underwater.

It was too dark to see now.

Which was about when things went wrong.