Nate-Walis

Cassie awoke to the familiar sensation of saltwater flowing into her gills, filling her chest with a rush of oxygen that brought her straight back to reality and banished the last remnants of the darkness she had fallen into when she clutched at the stone back in her former home. She opened her eyes to see that she was laid upon the floor of the tunnel where she had first found the stone, its golden, pulsing glow still visible from between her fingers as she clutched it on one hand. Instinctively afraid of the strange object, Cassie tossed it away from her and watched as it came to rest perhaps a metre from where she lay.   As the water ga...

Cassie was by no means too old to not be able to remember just how hard adolescence had been in terms of the painful transition between the relatively simple world of childhood and the bafflingly intimidating one of adulthood. She recalled a tumult of emotions, worries from which she had previously been shielded rushing in and making her despair that life was simply too much for her to bear. And the very moment that she seemed to have come to terms with all of that, she had been handed the unasked for responsibility of helping her younger sister Maddie through the exact same experience virtually alone.   At times it seemed a bitter irony t...