☽ ☉ ☾ ───── He wanted to swim. It had been a year of avoiding being in the water, avoiding being seen…and it didn’t help that his last time swimming ended with him being dragged into a nightmare and nearly drowning.
Kinda put a damper on the experience, really.
The campers would be leaving in the morning, everyone was (supposedly) asleep, the near-full moon was bright overhead, and he had easily hopped the brick barrier through the hole in the fence surrounding the pool. The pool was contained, far safer than swimming in the lake, and if he needed to make a hasty retreat it would be a far simpler escape. He just had to be quiet so he wouldn’t attract the attention of the campers in the nearby cabins. He wouldn’t swim for long, he told himself, just a few laps and maybe float for a bit.
It’d be the least stressful thing he’d done all summer, so far. Sneaking off in the dead of night, every night, to investigate the “Hag of Hackett’s Quarry” and the disappearances of multiple hikers, not to mention the two counselors that never showed in spite of being “on their way” and numerous reports and sightings of strange, violent “creatures” roaming the woods only to vanish without a trace…
He’d thought that getting away from Springwood would have given him some freedom from the deadly and bizarre, but like always he was proven wrong.
Getting his shirt off was…maybe more of a mental ordeal than he’d expected. The idea that even just the moonlight was bright enough for his scars to be seen was stressful. They were so distinct, still puckered and angry even after a year, how would he even explain them?
No more thoughts, he carefully dove into the water, trying not to make too much noise, and his tension fading as soon as he was enveloped by the cool, surrounding pressure and weightlessness, letting himself sink, hovering just above the floor of the pool for a moment. He watched the moonlight play over the ripples and the bubbles, almost glittering like silver.
It was a feeling he missed, staying under until his lungs began to give that familiar burn, and he kicked off the floor to the surface again. He laid on his back, floating along the surface and just watching the sky, ignoring the rest of the world for just s few more minutes…
