Chapter 21 Through the Veil of water

Chapter 21 Through the Veil of water
Cleo

The ocean called to me again.

Not gently.

Not with the whisper of waves along the shore.

Not with the soothing rhythm of tide against sand, or the velvet pull of a breeze carrying salt and memory.

No, this call was insistent, thrumming through me with the force of something ancient and alive. It wasn’t sound. It wasn’t vision. It was a need, bone-deep, soul-deep, that seized me the moment the sun slipped beneath the horizon. Something inside me turned, awakened, and reached outward. I felt it in my chest first, like a second heartbeat, then in my stomach, swirling and tightening until I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t resist.

It wasn’t even a decision. My feet moved before my mind caught up, carrying me through the sleeping beachside path, over cold stones and windblown dunes, toward the dark stretch of ocean unfurling beneath the moon.

I was in a daze, untethered from the world around me, unseeing, unthinking. All I became was the need. All I felt was the compulsion to be in the water, of the water… to answer whatever was calling me from its depths. My body hummed with urgency, and every step I took made the pressure worse, stronger, more demanding.

By the time I became fully aware of myself again, I was already at the shoreline, barefoot on wet sand.

The tide rushed over my toes, cold and electric, and my heart hammered against my ribs as if trying to escape. Night air curled around me, heavy with mist and salt, the taste of rain sitting sharp on my tongue. The world seemed muted except for the ocean, its voice, its presence, its pull.

My skin tingled. My pulse quickened. The wind stilled as if it, too, waited for what would happen next.

“Please,” I whispered, voice trembling with something halfway between desperation and hope. “Please, show me. Let me…” My throat tightened, the words catching. “…let me do something. Anything. Let me help.”

The sea responded.

The surface swirled suddenly, forming a slow, spiraling whirlpool that glowed faintly under the moonlight. The air thickened around me, warmer, charged, harder to breathe. My breath hitched.

Then the water rose.

A figure emerged from the spiral, forming first as mist, then as shimmering silhouette, and finally as a woman shaped from the sea itself.

Her hair flowed like liquid shadow, streaked with silver that flashed with every shift. Her skin glowed with a soft luminescence, and her eyes.

Her eyes were the same warm, knowing eyes from the old photographs. The ones I had stared at as a child, feeling a strange connection I’d never been able to explain.

My voice broke in a ragged whisper. “Grandmother?”

She smiled, soft, but powerful in a way that rooted me in place. “Cleo,” she said, and her voice carried across the water like a current tugging at my ribs. “You have waited long to hear me.”

“I don’t know how!” The confession tore itself out of me. My hands shook violently. “I’ve been trying! I can feel it inside me! I can feel it, but I don’t know how to let it out!”

Her expression softened with something like understanding, something like sadness. She stepped closer, her feet leaving trails of glowing water that rose and twirled behind her like silver-blue ribbons.

“You are afraid,” she said simply. “Afraid of what you are. Afraid of what you will become. And afraid of what will happen when you finally remember.”

“Yes!” I sobbed, dropping my gaze. “I’m afraid. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t know how to stop any of this. But I need to learn. I need to fight her. I need to protect him. Protect myself. Protect everything the ocean is trying to take or twist or...” My voice dissolved into a gasp.

The waves grew restless, the water curling higher around her ankles.

My grandmother reached out a hand, not touching me, but close enough that warmth radiated from her palm. “You have always been of the Threshold, Cleo,” she murmured. “Neither land nor sea alone. You carry the bridge in your blood. The sea calls you because it recognizes you. But you must claim that connection. Claim yourself.”

The words hit me with a force I felt in my bones.

I fell to my knees in the wet sand.

“How?” I begged, fingers digging into the earth. “Show me how. Please.”

She lifted both hands, palms upward, and the water instantly stirred to life around her. Spirals rose from the sea, shimmering like living glass, twisting in intricate, impossible patterns.

“Focus,” she commanded. “Do not think. Do not ask. Do not doubt. Let the water remember you.”

My breath stuttered.

I squeezed my eyes shut, letting the roar of the ocean fill my ears. I reached inward, past fear, past doubt, past the human shell I had clung to all my life. Deep, into the place I had always ignored. The place that burned with something wild, ancient, and hungry.

Then...

Something inside me clicked open.

Energy surged up my arms like lightning, racing beneath my skin. My lungs expanded with a sharp inhale, the air tasting different—brighter, more alive. My hair lifted slightly, like the world around me had gained a charge.

A soft gasp escaped my lips.

“Good,” my grandmother said, her voice now an anchor in the storm inside me. “Now let it flow through you—without fear, without force. Let it settle into you as naturally as breath.”

I let go of everything holding me back.

Fear fell away. Doubt dissolved. And the power blooming in my chest spread outward—hot and cold all at once.

The waves at my feet rose, swirling in time with my racing heartbeat. Water spiraled up from the tide, wrapping gently around my ankles, my calves, climbing higher like curious hands learning the shape of me.

I opened my eyes.

Water coiled up my arms in glowing ribbons, swirling around my wrists like bracelets forged from moonlit tides. Mist formed delicate shapes that shifted at my command, flower petals, spirals, arcs of light, all moving with the slightest flicker of my thought.

A laugh broke from me, half-disbelieving, half-euphoric. “I can feel it,” I breathed. “I can really feel it.”

“Yes,” she whispered. There was pride in her voice. And warning. “You have it. You always have. Do not let fear steal it from you. Control it. Let it answer to you, not the other way around.”

Tears streamed down my face, warm, grounding, real.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you for showing me I’m not broken. That I can be something more.”

Her image flickered, edges dissolving like smoke in wind. “Remember, Cleo,” she said, voice fading yet deepening, as though sinking into the ocean itself, “power is not only what you wield. It is what you protect.”

Then she was gone—leaving behind only the echo of her presence and the steady, pulsing energy that now lived in my chest.

The waves slowly retreated to their natural rhythm, but the connection in my body didn’t fade. It thrummed...alive.

But now… now I wasn’t the girl desperately answering its call.