Swallowed in the flames of my yearning, I cough and wheeze under the smoke. I feel my body drifting and rolling as if I were on a boat. Am I dying? The tiniest whir meets my ears, and suddenly, something hits my shoulder with the force of a truck.

  “OWWW!”

  I open my eyes. I’m surrounded by fire. Not metaphorical fire. Fire, real fire. I hiss in pain as I drag myself backward out of the flames. It hurts, worse than anything I have ever felt before. Even if I were to die right now, I think I would feel the pain for another year. Sheer terror fills my mind entirely. My burned legs scrape along the wood underneath and I nearly pass out. I pant and cough, my mind completely blank. There is still a stabbing pain in my shoulder. In my peripheral vision, I see a thin spoke of wood sticking out from a bloody wound. I gape at the object piercing into my shoulder. An arrow? Worse, a flaming arrow. The shaft is on fire and it’s spreading down toward my shoulder. I panic. I need to get rid of it. I grasp it with my other hand. The second I touch it, pain from the entry wound jolts through me.

  “AAAAGHH!”

  Shit. I can’t do it. I gasp for oxygen that isn’t there. The fire crawls closer. I don't have time. I need to get out of here. What the hell is going on? Is my house burning down? Is Mom okay? What about Lana? I grimace in agony, pushing myself up into a sitting position. I draw short painful gasps of breath, looking around in shock. My heart nearly stops.

  Deep blue ocean surrounds me on all sides. This isn’t my house. I’m sitting in a burning canoe in the middle of the ocean. This can’t be real. The rational part of my mind knows it can’t possibly be real, but there is a dreadful feeling in my gut that it must be real, and I’m stuck here. I’m supposed to be at home, stewing in my room, agonizing over my crush, not roasting alive and agonizing about the flaming rod sticking out from my shoulder. But it’s all too vivid, too strange to be a dream. There’s no way I could imagine this level of pain on my own. What reason and intelligence I have left are quickly drained from me as the fire spreads down from the arrow and into the wound from where it protrudes. It hurts. It hurts it hurts it hurts. I scramble over the side of the canoe, throwing myself into the water with the desperation of a wild animal.

  Frigid water envelops my body, cancelling out any sound. The flames and heat are swallowed up in the darkness. Perhaps I would have worried about hypothermia, or drowning, but my mind was far too scattered for such things. Breathe. That was my only thought. I need to breathe. I clamber for the surface, but quickly discover that my left shoulder is out of commission. Any slight movement of my arm makes a sharp pain that feels like I’m being repeatedly shot with a rifle. Pain courses up and down my body, lighting up my spine like the lights on an old arcade machine. Not metaphorically, it actually glows. I don’t know if I’m hallucinating, but I swear I can actually see lights flashing out from my torso in the darkness. This is all too surreal. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be here. Thrashing my legs, I splash above the surface of the water, but I can’t stay up for long. I gulp in a mixture of air and seawater, stressing my muscles to the point of failure. It’s then that I hear a voice, high and strained.

  “Kelvem cot shunbagitt!” a woman cries from nearby. Thank God! A wave of adrenaline shoots through me. I can’t make out what she said, but I crane around wildly trying to spot her. I hear her panicked voice again.

  “Sybil! Shunbaggit ibit lappa!”

  I can’t tell what she’s saying over the splashing waves and my own rapid panting. My mind is at its limit anyways. I struggle towards the voice with the last of my strength.

  “SYBIL!” she screams.

  I can't make it. I fall. The ocean engulfs my limp body. This is it. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where I am. I don't even know how I got here. The sickening realization dawns on me that this is how I die. Pain, panic, asphyxiation, and that’s the end. Of everything.

  But just as my head dips below the surface, I spot something floating on the water less than a meter away. It’s too dark to see, and I’m being buried deeper and deeper in the waves. But for some reason I know exactly what it is, automatically. It’s a rope. I can't make it out, but I just know it's a rope. How do I know? Somehow I’m certain of it. It doesn't make much sense, but I’m too worried about dying to care. It's a rope. I need to grab the rope. I have no energy, yet from somewhere I draw out one last push. This is the last chance.

  I blindly thrash in the direction of the rope, feeling my spirit decay down to atoms as my blood trails behind me through the water. I grab onto something. It feels like- I’ll be damned, it really was a rope! Determination washes over me. I’m not going to die! As I grip it, the rope begins being tugged backward. I hold on for dear life, letting everything else go. Even my face goes limp. I can't turn my head to see what's pulling me, and I certainly don't have the power to turn my body around.

  “Nok ermibo got! Sybil, be dascha!” The woman yells from behind me. What language is that?

  Then, from above, a lanky arm reaches out toward me. I try grabbing on with my left hand. I don't get far.

  “AGH!”

  I hack loudly. Blood oozes from my shoulder. Dammit! Not the left hand, I have to remember, that one is strictly off limits! The arrow twists in my wound, like a drill bit boring into my shoulder, overwhelming me. I let go of the rope. For a moment, I start sinking again, but the woman catches my outstretched right hand. I grab onto hers with all of my strength. She pulls as hard as she can. Emerging shoulders up from the water, I finally face her rowboat, and see her for the first time. I suck in breath like my life depends on it. Wind whipping around us, we behold each other.

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  She almost looks like she could be Cleopatra's sister. Rather, Cleopatra’s starving sister. A small woman with stark, clear-cut features like a model, dazzling gold jewelry contrasting against plain white robes. She seems like a ghost dislodged from the pages of ancient history. The pale fabric draped gracefully over her tan body is juxtaposed against her glossy black hair, which hangs straight down in thick strands like big handfuls of licorice.

  She tries her best to pull me out of the water. Unable to move my other arm, I hang there uselessly.

  “Pak!” She curses, struggling to lift me even an inch.

  “Yuutum. Be galaap goek jascha.” She gripes in a weak voice. Whatever language this is, I’ve never heard it. She seems angry. Neither of us can make any progress pulling me up into her rowboat, so we just sort of hold hands for a while. This might even be romantic if I wasn’t bleeding out and panting like a dog. I take a single deep breath. My body is weak and my voice comes out hoarse and scratchy.

  “Do you speak english?” I ask with little hope.

  The woman just looks at me in surprise. I assume that’s a no. We stare at each other for a moment before her eyes dart away to the left. Huh? I follow her gaze leftward to… absolutely nothing, just more water. She looks back at me again, but as soon as I meet her gaze with my own, she turns her head again, shunning me with a grumpy expression. She’s very awkward. Why is she frowning? Am I that ugly? I look down at myself. Weirdly, my body seems very different from usual.

  I don’t remember my skin being that dark before. Did I get toasted by that fire? Is that how that works? I don’t think that’s how that works. My arm is oddly muscular, too. I’m really in no condition to assess my body, however. The whole moment passes in a daze as my heart races away.

  I’m still catching my breath for a while. The wind and waves heave along with me. I watch the stranger holding me up as she stares off at the horizon. I wonder what her name is. She doesn’t speak English, so I’m unable to ask her. Maybe charades would work? With one arm? …Probably not. My anxious speculation seems to make the woman’s nose itch. She finally looks back towards me, seeming irritated. For a second, we stare into each other's eyes. Her eyes are blue, but a shade unlike I’ve ever seen. They aren’t sky blue, but instead they are the color of the ocean, a rich, deep blue, almost purple. There's something calming about them. Like before, she immediately looks away in a huff.

  “Sybil!”

  She sounds mad. Is she… blushing? Maybe I’m staring too much. I look elsewhere and finally notice the handful of rowboats that have been approaching us. They look friendly. Thank god. It dawns on me just how lucky I am not to be dead at the moment. Though, I’m closer to dead than I’d like to be. When the rowboats are close enough, they slow to a stop. Then, someone stands up. I can hardly believe my eyes in the moments that follow. A muscular giant of a woman leaps into the air from her boat and crashes down right next to the woman holding my hand.

  “AAAaaee!” She shrieks, involuntarily letting go of my hand. The boat splashes and rocks violently, almost capsizing. The poor little lady is completely knocked off balance and falls backward into the boat.

  “Uhhh?” I moan dumbly, slowly sinking back into the water beneath me. My mind is just TV noise. I am unable to compute my current situation.

  In one swift movement, as if she were merely picking up a purse off her nightstand, the towering strongwoman reaches down and yanks me up out of the water. Her massive hands wrapped around my sides, she holds me up in the air like some kind of pet cat. A shiver runs down my spine as I look at her. She stares into my eyes with an intense expression. There are tears streaming down her flushed cheeks. Her reddish hair converges into a tight, thick bun. The tense knot of fiery hues conjures into my mind a split-second snapshot of the exact moment a vacuum bomb detonates. The anachronistic leather tunic she sports is hardly worth noting compared to the exquisite muscles it rests atop. She has muscles bulging in places I didn’t even know muscles existed. Wow, even her jaw is ludicrously muscular. With a face like that, she could scare off an MMA fighter without saying a word. And if she did open her mouth, who knows? On that note, she belts out a cry that nearly makes my ears ring.

  “KEEEIHVEEEEEE!” She roars, swallowing me in a suffocating hug.

  “OW! That hurts!” I wheeze.

  This “hug” would have hurt even if I weren’t gravely injured. At the very least, she holds me high enough so that the arrow sticking out of me clears her shoulder. Rocking from one foot to another, she spins around, a veritable tornado of passion. Captive in her arms, I endure this strange carnival ride for the time being, just thankful to breathe air. This rowboat is unusually sturdy and buoyant, but I’m not going to complain. The massive woman sobs, repeating the same phrase again and again.

  “KIVI, KIVI, KIVI, KEEVEEEE!” My eardrums hurt at least one percent as much as the rest of my body. And why does she keep calling me her sister?

  “Quiet already! I’m not your damn sister!” I gripe, wincing in pain. In that moment, I didn’t even realize that I had perfectly understood her strange language. She stops spinning, seeming to cool down a bit. Over the weeping amazon’s shoulder, I spot poor little Cleopatra, finally getting her footing as the rocking boat settles. With one hand she nurses a bump on her temple. With her other hand clenched into a tiny fist, she unleashes a flurry of punches into the tall woman’s back, all of which go entirely unnoticed. I blink. Who are these damned people? The mountain of a woman speaks again, now at an acceptable volume.

  “Ohh, Kivi, be nona kaischen!” she finally places me back down into the boat. “Yuutum, yuutum, bi gohuaschinin”.

  Standing is difficult, so I gingerly plop myself back onto a seat. Maybe it's the adrenaline, but I think the burns don't hurt as bad as before. I clear my throat before thoughtlessly replying in a language I’ve never spoken before. Inconceivably, these are the words that left my lips:

  “Shaywah, be fiki bi zalus en chuss. Tel noor be bi sese ‘kivi’?”

  I blink a few times, as does the amazon. Then I gasp. She gasps. Even the little woman behind her gasps. I nearly pass out from the shock, though I currently have many reasons to pass out.

  “What the hell!?”