He couldn't understand why death wasn't negotiable. In what other ungodly place could life be so reconcilable? It wasn't his perspective, or the unfortunate angle of his eyes in the slant ray of the light beam of truth or anything. This wasn't some god awful swell of terrible luck that had ruled against him in every aspect of his life - he'd be lying to himself with modest optimism then. This life was supposed to be an eternal nightmare for him: not the slim odd of a thousand accidental ricochets, where life ended up apologizing for the bullets - no, this was a series of straight shots, aimed left-on for his heart. 

How haven't they killed me?

It was purely a torture, to live.

When he rolled his cloudy, slurring gaze back to the dim silhouette of his unbeknownst savior, he already knew, and held with great, ever heavy reluctance that these breaths would not be his last. He could feel it in the way she saw through him like seldom could. She saw right down to the briny sand beneath his clear, flickering surface that there was a beating heart within him that she felt she owed empathy, compassion, and whatever other garbage these poor blessed daughters of the world could believe. He felt her sharp pupils swimming deeper and with every passing grain of time he wished he could be opaque, so dark, so treacherous. So perilous, that even the ocean receded.

But everyone wants to feel the warmth of soft shallow waves, intangibles, rolling from sight, from feel; they want security: the water-source of all life. They want the promise of a good body of water but not the truth of it. They want to wade in the umbilical fluids of company. They'd substitute anyone.

They all want the same nurturing.

"Please, I cannot kill you..."

Her voice could not completely penetrate him, but rushed through the cracks in his delusion. Begging was not a force of nature, it had to be reasoned with.

"Please... don't ask for such a thing..."

Euphrates was always too kind to demand, to force a knee-high tsunami on anyone's moral consciousness. But living was drowning, to him. Each breath was a deep gut-full of fear: the trauma that lingered somewhere, silently scouring for the moment his eyes closed, breaching when they opened. In these moments he couldn't tell if fear was still chasing him, or if it was simply the will to die.

His lips weakly parted, revealing surprising silence. "No really -" a coagulated cough broke free for a moment. "I've had enough, I want you to." His voice bled crisp lines into the air, the most certainty he'd possessed in a long time. This was the best he could do. The best he'd spoken in his entire life.

But her voice continued on, suggesting they find a place where the world was drier and darker. A place where they could reason with a drop of time. Euphrates scoured her voice, but she only spoke of better places - places he knew were temporary. He wanted permanent. He wanted to see and feel nothing for the rest of it. He wanted nothing more than anything.

When she mentioned finding a piece of driftwood to drag him with he could only shake his head, sending sharp-capped ripples over his face. He blinked twice at her. 

"Help me stand."

A RIVER IN A TIME OF DRYNESS, A HARBOR IN THE TEMPEST