Perhaps swimming in the lake at night was a bit dangerous, a bit foolhardy, and yet here she was. The rocky shore pricked at the soles of her feet as she lined up her boots neatly out of range of the ebb and flow of the lake. It was October 30, the night just edging over into the glorious spectacle that was Halloween, and Preacher needed to feel water on her skin like she needed air. Perhaps, she thought idly, this meant she didn't actually need air any longer. A fanciful, potentially fatal thought - she knew it was silly, so she cast that thought aside, shivered, and stripped quickly to her sports bra and shorts. It was too cold for this, but the air felt heavy, clinging to her skin moistly.

She'd been swimming at the gym's pool every day, spending too long in showers (never enough to be late to work, but it had been close a few times). It wasn't enough, lately; Preacher just felt better wet. Her headaches seemed to subside - they didn't come often now, but the water made them better. The ears, too, had faded. She had glided through the water in the gym pool with a newfound grace, although her time was marred by jarring, intrusive thoughts about how her body was wrong. Her hair was too buoyant, too full of trapped water, suffocating in the dark strands that twisted around her as she moved. Her hair was a separate entity from herself in the water, and Preacher had debated cutting it off entirely a few times. Vanity won out. Aggressively, she forced it into a braid, her small fingers fierce and practiced.

Then, Preacher waded out and gasped as she made contact with the dark lake waters. It was cold, so cold, too much so for her thin skin. But the temperature sucked out her thoughts, too, and she stroked out into the lake in long, gliding movements, swallowing her misgivings, swallowing everything but instinct. Laying on her back, Preacher floated, the stars bright and clear between the trees' bare branches. Goosebumps pricked up along her skin, and she shivered still, not realizing it, but content instead to lay still, and look, and float and not think of much of anything at all. The natural feeling of everything ghosted over her like a breath - Preacher was supposed to be here sometimes, in the cool damp. In the water.

After a period in which time mattered less than the gentle sway of the water, Preacher flipped over, intending to move out further, to dive into the darkness and see wonders that only moonlight ever saw. But her arms refused to work quickly, her legs were like stones, and she floundered. The cold had seeped into her muscles, making them both weak and stiff. Preacher swallowed water. Spluttering, she bobbed back up, sleepy mind now racing. The shore, the shore, theshoretheshohethe... shore.She was close, and lucky to be so. There was no one out here to save her from her own mistakes, no one to ensure she didn't die a meaningless death on a meaningless shore. These were the thoughts that kept her company, that straightened her spine and kept panicked tears from her face. Crying did nothing, anyway.

Finally, she curled into a ball on the shore, a rock stabbing her viciously under one rib. Preacher shivered and shivered and shivered, the lake water lapping up across her legs sweetly, seeming to stroke long fingers across her skin and say 'come back'. She had to go. Shaking, she pushed herself up to a crawl, then a kneel. She would do this because this was her mistake, her weakness for giving in to what had felt like an undeniable need. This 'bullshit rainy land flu' could ********' suck it. Preacher knew it wasn't that, she thought exasperatedly, but it made her feel better, it made her movements fueled a bit more by spite. And spite always made life a little less painful. She grit her teeth and moved.