I Am Atlantis

Title: I am Atlantis
Author: Ladyholder
Banner Art: CinnaMinion
Pairings: None
Word Count: 522
Rating: G
Betas: None
Warnings: Depression

Water

My dreams are filled with the feel of water. Blue, green and the deepest darkest black, it surrounds me and smothers me. It presses against me, harder and harder to keep away, keep out. I do not want to drown under the weight of it around me. It creeps into me, bit by bit and I try so hard to keep my towers dry behind my shields.

Shields

My shields flicker and contract toward my center. I can feel the far ends of my superstructure flood and I try not to shift. The water and pressure will damage me soon, but all I can do is try to protect what is still dry. Even if I can feel the invading element trickle in, drop by drop. Airtight I might be, but I can’t stay safe forever from this pressure. If I must, I will sacrifice myself, bit by bit, moving my shields ever inward, to keep as much safe as I can.

Light.

I can barely feel the light of this systems star warming the waters above me. The energy contained within the light is just out of reach, teasing the photovoltaic cells I have built into my towers. It wouldn’t be enough, that energy, that life, but I wanted it. And it is just out of reach.

Air

When I had been sunk, my shield and towers had been full of air that was alive with plants, animals and people. Now, after thousands of years behind my shield, the air I have been guarding is stale, and death floated on it, in the rare areas where I am able to move it. I do my best, trying to keep a spark of life in it because I know that I have to. My builders will be back. They promised.

Power

When I first sank, power sang through my towers, my shield was strong and layered, resilient with the knowledge that I had power to spare.  Then my builders left. My power was throttled, contained and restricted to one solitary potentia at a time and I shriveled. The human sleeping within woke only twice to change out the remaining potentia one by one so I could only subsist. The water I was in did not feed me, the light that reached me was too weak to sustain me. I starved.

All of this, these conditions, these restrictions bade me to sleep. My sleep was uneasy, interrupted by the great enemy coming to the edges of my range and them moving away. I waited, waited for my builders to come back. I waited in vain. But… Their children did. And I rose to sit upon the water once more, to allow the light of this systems star to bathe my towers with freely offered power and I drank from it. The air behind my shields was released back into the world and new, living air flowed in, full of all that had been missing for thousands of years. My shields were down and I gloried in the new life I guarded.

I am Atlantis. I am alive. I have survived.  Fear me.

 The Art Right above is by CinnaMinion. The stuff in the text was found online.