while I continued to sink to my doom, I wondered if I had ever stood a fighting chance.
A memory of Dominick surfaced in my head, the sound of his soothing voice bringing me comfort.
* * *
"This is too hard." I was on the verge of tears. "Why is swimming so difficult? It's scary going to the deep end!"
"Says the sixteen-year-old." Dominick chuckled. "You know how to swim."
"I know how to swim in the shallow depths of the kiddie pool!" I argued. "I would have drowned if you hadn't saved me back there."
My frustration had him moving closer in the water, my back pressed against the wall of our pool and his body against mine. I stared at him as he smiled and moved the wet strands that stuck to my face.
"You need to remove your fear."
"How? I'm afraid of dark places and the deeper you go, the darker it is."
"Why are you afraid of being so deep? It's more than just the darkness. You can still see the sunset from down there."
"Losing oxygen," I stressed. "Humans have to breathe regularly, unlike you supernatural beings with gigantic lungs."
"Oh." He had genuinely just realized that. "You know that's a mental game."
"It is not! We all require oxygen! Even you at some point."
"Yes," he agreed. "But there's more to it."
"To drowning?"
"To surviving," he whispered and looked me dead in the eyes. "When fear engulfs you, all it does is hasten your demise. You begin to realize there's no hope in living and your mind gives up before your body does. You can't give your mind the mental satisfaction of losing."
"Mental satisfaction of losing?" I repeated and thought about it.
"You know that eight-year-old who recently set a record for reaching the bottom of the deepest pool in the world?"
"Yeah. It was on the news yesterday," I noted.
"In order to do that, she'd have to hold her breath for the journey down there and the journey back up. At a certain point, light doesn't reach there anymore and it's extremely hard on the body. Not even the lightbulbs stay functional. A mage had to assist in lighting the path back up once she completed the test."
"That's...scary," I mumbled.
"She was human," he reminded. "The whole world was baffled that an eight-year-old was able to hold her breath for that long, conquer the dark depths and pressure that came with the endeavor, and the exhaustion she dealt with after reaching the surface. You know what she told the news people when they asked her how she did it?"
"What?"
"When she dives down, she thinks of it as a tunnel. A long, long tunnel and she has to reach the bottom to save the people she loves. Her parents, brother, sister, and pet bunny. She thought about her friends and instructors and all those she cared for. Her determination to reach the bottom meant she would be able to save them all. Even with her being a mere human in a world full of supernaturals, she knew she could do whatever she put her mind to and in return, her body would follow and aid her. That mindset is the strongest when you're young because you have less fear. You're not afraid of what is to come, but afraid of not doing the things you enjoy and want to achieve."
He grinned and looked to the sky. "Kids have very few limitations because they don't know fear. You hear the stories where they fall off balconies or into deep oceans, and many of them survive. All because they don't fear the unknown or failure. They strive forward, not caring what is there, as long as they achieve it. It's when the world beings to taint our mind that we start to fear what is before us. It's sad, but then we learn to overcome those challenges."
His head lowered to look at me once more.
"You can succeed at anything you want to achieve, Cassandra. Don't let your human qualities stop you. Don't let the darkness ignite fear within you. You can achieve greatness, all on your own. Keep your eyes on the prize and reach for it. Even if you can't see it."
"What if I'm still scared?"
"Then think of me." His smile was radiant as the calm in his eyes twinkled like shining lights. "Think of me waiting for you at the top. Cheering you every bit of the way. You can do anything, Cassandra, and I believe in you. Whether I'm there with you or not doesn't matter. Just know