Waist deep in the rising floodwaters, she waded her way frantically through the partially submerged town in search of higher ground, but to no avail. All she could see in front of her then were rows and rows of houses, just like her own, slowly disappearing from the bottom up as the water levels continued to ascend.
Deep inside her mind, she knew that if things were to continue as they were, she would soon have to swim to keep herself above the water surface; a thought which compounded the weight of the fear that was already bearing down upon her racing heart, for far was she from being an adept in water.
But in her state of worsening panic, a familiar scene she suddenly recalled. A scene of many colours splashed across a canvas of stone and grass, one of tiled roofs, and chimneys and wind vanes that twirled ever so freely in the changing winds. It was the town as seen from above, from a place of higher altitude that made the lawns and houses look like miniatures in a toy shop.
It was the view of the town that she had seen from atop the hill, where the old rustic church stood humbly against the backdrop of the majestic sky. And now, that old rustic church was the only refuge that she could think of, for having been born and raised in the town all her years, she knew that there was nothing else in the vicinity that was taller than the cross that sat above the stained glass windows, glimmering like the inside of a kaleidoscope on the roof of the house of the Most High.
Pressing forward through the storm with all the strength she could muster, she made her way without a single moment of rest through the canals that now ran between the town structures in place of the lanes and cobbled stone roads. Across the flooded city square she traversed, where she was met midway at the weathered fountain by the unsettling sight of a faintly blue flower head, falling lifelessly from one side to another in accordance with the movements of the undercurrents amidst the yellow stone base of the fountain.
Fearing that the same misfortune that had befallen the flower would come to claim her next, she further quickened her pace for the remainder of the journey and eventually arrived at the foot of the hill amidst waters that reached right up to the bottom of her chin.
Desperately filling her lungs through short, shallow breaths, her hands, driven by the primal fear of her nose and mouth being submerged, quickly latched themselves onto the grassy slopes of the hill, which she then used to pull herself up and out of the merciless grasp of the fast rising waters, albeit with much difficulty.
Stumbling up the hill on legs aching and unsteady from overexertion, she found it nothing short of impossible to keep herself from slipping as she made her ascent up the lush, green slopes, which although were not of steep incline, had now become excessively slippery with a gigantic web of little streams running down along them in all directions.
But still she did not resign to her fate and continued to flee from the roaring waters that adamantly chased behind her. Toward the church she climbed and climbed, her momentum constantly broken by slips and falls along the way, and when she could climb no more, she began to crawl, but still the endless rain did not relent and instead, grew unimaginably stronger and heavier.
As she drew closer and closer to the unmistakable silhouette of the cross atop the church, the environment around her started to break up into darkened shapes, swirling into a convoluted array of green, grey and black. Her head was heavy one second and light the next, and her skin a ghastly shade of white that contrasted with the drenched, black garments that shrouded her cold, quivering body. Instinctively, she resisted the darkness that was closing in from the edges of her sight and continued to crawl and crawl until eventually, she found herself at the back of the overshadowed abbey.
Her body had reached its limit. A single arm’s length away from his gravestone she laid, paralyzed both physically and mentally, and as she reached toward that which stood deeply rooted in the ground in memory of him, her eyelids grew heavier and heavier till they became too heavy for her to keep from closing, and into the darkness she slipped for resist it no more was she able to do.
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