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// Chapter 5: A storm of deceit, an ocean of poison 
// Story: What you Need 
// by Hemlock conium 
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The next few days following Mirage's visit were a disjointed and incoherent blur. My determination, my only companion and sole guide in this land, had abandoned me. Stranding me in the unfamiliar and tumultuous sea of aloofness; intensified by the terrifying storm of lethargy. The duo devoured everything they touched, till nothing was truly left like a plague. Nothing would satisfy their awful hunger. Nothing could stop it either, and I would be no expedition to its hunger. 

The rain pounded down like a deafening drum. Fighting to consume all that I could hear and see, even my thoughts were not safe from it. The sound wormed their way into my ears and  slipped into my mind. Wriggling their way into every thought until the two became an inseparable and awful noise. All the while its clouds greedily slurped up my sole companion, my only guide, my stars; leaving me isolated and without direction.  Even the seemingly vast night sky was no match for its hunger. It seemed not even large enough to be an appetizer to the gluttonies storm. Its gluttony was unmatched expert for one thing.
Its accomplice, its equal, its geminate, the ocean. The waters ranged against my very being. Each of its waves drenched me, leaving me soaked to my very soul. Every drenching was another weight that attempted to pull me down into its poisonous water. Each tide was a tendril that wished to drag me down beneath its murky surface. Its waves battered me every chance they received; each strike was harder than the last. Every wave slowly chipped away at my endurance. It was a battle of wills, but it was not one I could win. 

In the end I simply couldn't fight it anymore, or maybe I didn't wish to fight them anymore. Whatever the result, I was far too tired to struggle against the inevitable anymore. So I let the storm bring my mind into its hypnotic white noise and I let the ocean carry me into its cool, inky depths. The world around me faded in my captor’s embrace. Things around me changed, though liberated might have been a more apt descriptor. As I was saved from the torment of the surface, the place in which all my frustration and sorrow remained. The waves protected me from their clutches and the rains pounding shielded me from their noise. I was simply too blind to have seen it before, the duo's true intent. Not to devour but rather shield me from the world.
As I sunk deeper into the depths my days and nights became intertwined into an endless twilight. The vivid colors of the world were obscured by the rains above. Transforming them from  hues of burnt ochre, lavenders, and emeralds into reds, yellows and blues. The  smells of the rich earthy world were overpowered by the sea water until they were indistinguishable. The joy filled cheers and conversations of the hospital were deafened to little more than distant and unintelligible echoes by the storm’s siren call. 
Even my one-on-one conversations felt like they were now asked by someone a whole world away to a person I didn't know. The doctors sat on the opposite side of my savior's surface. They looked down to me with worry, afraid of what had become of me beneath the waves. They called for me and reached their hooves in to try and pull me away from the ocean’s comfort. Thankfully the waves did not budge in their grip, and so I remained protected from the awful things that lurked just above the ocean's surface. 

So far down beneath the waves and shielded by the storm's clouds, I was left impervious to the surface's blight of pains. Impervious to the pains of my reality. Impervious to the pains of my shortcomings. I was at last safe.