It Fucken Wimdy
Lines cut into her cheeks before she even lands. Her upper back bounces on the ground. Air explodes out through her mouth and puffs out her eyes, pulling tears after it. Pain shoots up from her back and stabs into her head. She skids to a stop in the mud.
No air. No air! Arte swipes at the wind to bring oxygen in side her lungs. Or at least she tries to. Her arms do not move. She tries again, but the darkening edges of her vision tick down her limited time. She closes her eyes.
The throbbing of her upper back muddies the feeling of the surrounding currents, but she can still find them. She is a river running empty. Attempts to trickle the nearby streams into herself disappear into her dry and crumbling river bed. She goes down, down, down her course till she meets ocean and pulls at the yawning pool. Water rushes into her bed too quickly to properly contain. Her banks crumble and slide into the water below under the currents, but at last she is whole.
Arte opens her eyes. The pressure of her over filled lungs bat away her mad grab for air. She sighs out in relief and slams into a wall. Air swirls around inside of her, pushing her alveoli taught and refusing to leave. Oxygen trickles out for waste. Her face tingles from the stale air. She goes to puff air out her nose, to cough, to scream, but nothing happens.
Her vision swirls. The effort kicked up her heart, stealing more oxygen. She has to call on her power to pull the air out of her lungs. The dead mass of carbon dioxide and water vapor splats pathetically into the greater wind.
Arte’s eyes dart around and she flails out, throwing her full weight, desperate to move anything.
Nothing.
Air cycles through her lungs, faster and faster, whirring like a spinning wheel. Arte tugs hard on the reins of her power to stop it from inducing hyperventilation in a body that can’t even fucking breathe.
She spends an eternity in the mud, pulling and pushing air in and out of a body she cannot feel, before green and orange robes appear in the corner of her vision.