Elegy

SIXTY-ONE Vestige

She hadn’t seen as much of the world as she’d wanted to. In fact, she’d hardly seen any of it. Thea had spent thousands of years roaming the planet, but she had hardly gone anywhere since so much of it was too far inland.

That, and Penn always dictated where they went. Penn couldn’t stand the call of the watersong, so she refused to go anywhere that caused her the slightest bit of pain. Thea had thought that with Penn gone, she’d finally be able to explore all the places that had been blocked off to her.

But as it turned out, Thea didn’t do so well against the watersong, either. She didn’t go very far, and she always seemed to end up back in the ocean.

Still, the last two days of her life couldn’t be called bad. In fact, they were some of the very best she’d had in a very long time. Without all of Penn’s demands and threats and constant tantrums, everything had felt so much nicer.

Though Thea wished that Aggie had been there to share it with her, and even Ligea. She had loved them, and she still missed them. Penn had all but forbidden her to talk about them anymore, and Thea wondered once again why she’d listened.

It wasn’t that she was scared of Penn, but Thea felt intrinsically that she’d failed her. Since the day Penn was born, she had felt unloved and abandoned, and she had been by her parents. Thea had always tried to make up for that, but all she’d ever done was make things worse.

The horrible truth was that the curse was her fault. If she’d yelled at Penn that day, the day they’d left Persephone alone, or if Thea had simply let Penn go off without her, then none of this would have happened. So she’d spent nearly her entire existence trying to make it up to Penn for allowing her to be cursed in the first place.

The real kicker at the end of all of this is that Demeter’s curse centered around their love of swimming, but Penn had never even cared for it that much. She’d been smitten with Poseidon, that was all. It had been Thea who loved the water, and, somehow, she loved it still today.

She waded out into the water, relishing the way her legs fluttered for the last time as they turned into a tail. The sky was lightening above her, so she swam out on her back, floating out farther into the ocean.

Her thoughts went back to her sisters, and all the fun they’d had when they were young, before all this madness with Demeter. Penn had claimed that everything had been a horrible struggle. Things were hard, but what Thea remembered most was how much she had loved them all.

She missed them terribly, and though she hoped she would see them again, she doubted she would. With everything she’d seen, Thea wasn’t completely sure she believed that there was a heaven, but even if there was, she most certainly wouldn’t be going there.

As she felt the rays of the sun warming her skin through the water, Thea closed her eyes. The tingling started first in her fingers, and she was relieved that it didn’t hurt. It actually felt good, like a whole new transformation, as her body slowly dissolved into ash.

Soon, there was nothing. The dust was lost in the sea. And Thea was gone.