“This way, over there!”
Callie made it two hundred and three steps to the top of the intimidating structure, every cancerous inch of her legbones screaming out for reprieve, but the voice wouldn’t be ignored.
Tears in her eyes, she soaked up the ocean breeze, casting her gaze out towards the beautiful miles of seaside. A flutter to her left startled Calle, and out of the corner of her eye, for several moments, she saw a bat-like creature, silvery gray, long sloping neck, and long, forked tail. She wiped her eyes, focusing again on the spot, but the beast was gone.
Call let her vision glide up to the place above the area the animal vanished, and immediately focused on a large hole in the landscape. “Cenote,” she thought, drawing upon a long forgotten memory as a girl when cave diving seemed interesting.
She turned quickly, almost running down the stairs, corkscrewing her way to the bottom of the lighthouse, stopping briefly at the gift shop to buy a map of the local terrain. The voice urged, “Yes, there! The Well of Dreams!” Callie almost vibrated with excitement, hopping onto her scooter.
She forced the little rental up the narrow hiking path until she hit the sign warning curious tourists that death waited any who crossed the border fence into the sinkhole.
Ignoring the handwriting screaming Cuidado and Muerte, Callie forced her way between the barbed wire and frantically began to jog towards the giant underground cave.
She skidded to a halt, barely preventing herself from falling into the dark water below. The skyline had grown dark as she had made her frantic dash and memory served to remind her the solar eclipse was the reason she had travelled to this part of the world, Make A Wish having paid for her to see her first and only full solar eclipse, the terrible bone cancer eating away at her short life.
But, here she stood, the world going dark, the depths of the cenote unseen and the only evidence of its existence the wet, dripping sounds of the underworld.
Callie heard a sound behind her and lost her footing as a huge replica of the creature she had seen earlier popped up, breathing on her neck, causing her to spin backwards. Its ember eyes connected with hers as she fell back first into the pit, too surprised to even utter a sound.
Hitting the water, Callie’s last memory was the sight of a huge, snakelike head with glowing orange eyes against a starry backdrop, and the words, “And, so you are reborn!” echoing in her water-logged ears. Was that a dragon?
Down, down, down, through the blackness, the breath leaving her in bubbles, and choking, Callie felt a wrenching pain in her legs as if peroxide had invaded her entire lower half. Her jeans ripped, her back twisted, and the pain of it all jarred her into obliviousness.
Callie awoke, perched sideways on a ledge, light filtering slowly through the moss and roots of the exposed trees at the top of the cenote. She coughed and sputtered, shaking uncontrollably as the water expelled from her lungs and she twisted into a fetal position. She grabbed her knees, but, her knees WEREN’T KNEES!
She touched the iridescent pattern of the scaled flesh, realizing she felt the weight of her hand and gasped, uncurling her new fin and sliding away from the edge of the precipice. Her cancer was gone, and now, she had a new lease on life.
To be continued…
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