swim free

by ballpointae

00. Fire On Shore.

Fei Irvette. Where she comes from, her name meant fly, friend of sea. Quite beautiful, really.

But that wasn't her name. Not exactly. She remembered having a different one, long long time ago. But it has been seven years in this new life, and her memory wasn't that good in the first place.

She did remember the warmth of her previous family, the love for her siblings, the affections from her parents and laughter of her friends. Her wonderful life had been cut short. How and why, she couldn't remember. She didn't want to, honestly.

So now, she was Fei Irvette, daughter of Shui Irevette and Lang Irvette.

((She laughed when she found out Shui and Lang meant water and wave respectively. What a couple.))

"Fei!" She heard her mother, Shui, shouting downstairs. "Time for breakfast!"

"Five more minutes..."

"What was that? No swimming later?"

Fei shot up from bed. "I'm up, I'm up!"

You see, if there was one solid thing she remembered from her previous life, it would be her intense love for swimming. She wasn't that good of a swimmer to go to the... Olympics, was it? But she was pretty decent and one of the more skillful swimmers in her village.

And bless whoever's in charge of her reincarnation because, her village was a fishing village. That meant her peninsula of a village was surrounded by water. It's like swimming pools everywhere! ((With certain restrictions of course.))

The only downside was that she couldn't swim at dawn or dusk, since those were the best fishing times. But that wasn't really a downside anyways, because she got to help her father, Lang, fish. Fishing might be her second love at this rate.

Fei kicked her blanket aside and jumped out of bed. She did a couple of stretches to get rid of any leftover sleepiness, brushed her teeth and stuff, and then walked down the stairs.

The smell of grilled fish wafted through the air when she entered the kitchen. Of course, fish again. Well, fish was the best anyways. Next to chicken.

Fei sat down at the table as her mother passed her a plate of lo and behold, grilled mackerel. She took a bite and instantly melted. Hot damn, she loved her mom's cooking.

"Well, look who decided to wake up?" Shui teased Fei, running her fingers through her daughter's hair to smoothen out any knots.

"Mommmm!" Fei whined. "Your hands are oily, stop it!" Playfully, she batted her mother's hands away making the older woman pout.

"You're going to swim later, right?" Gobbling her mackerel, Fei gave a quick nod, her face in the textbook definition of 'duh.'

"Make sure you come home to bathe when you're done." A quick glare. "Don't think I forgot what you did last time." Fei grinned sheepishly.

"Well, look at the time!" Swallowing the last bit of her meal, she rushed out the door. "See you later! Love you, mom!"

"Love you too, Fei."

"Fei! You're finally here!" Anahita, a beautiful girl befitting of her name water goddess, waved to her. Fei smiled and quickened her pace.

"About time," Anahita's brother who lived up to his name power of the sea, scoffed. Zale was what you would call a tsundere. Anahita smacked him upside the head, making him yelp.

"Don't be rude, Zale!" Fei could only laugh at the sight. She was glad to make friends her age, even if they were immature at times. She didn't remember her actual age but she was sure her mind was mentally older than all the kids here. Even the older ones.

They were all in their swimming attires already, so all that was left was to swim! They raced each other to the edge of the village.

"Last one there is a rotten fish!" Fei dashed.

"Hey, no fair!"

"Argh."

As expected, Fei was the first to reach, and she had dived into the water already. She looked perfectly at home.

Amused, Anahita joined her, jumping from ground to water and making a huge splash. Zale rolled his eyes before doing the same thing.

"Look who's a natural born dolphin~" Anahita poked Fei's cheek as Fei laid on her back, her short pale blue hair fanned out. Fei swatted her hand away, eyes closed and relaxed.

"Why don't you ever swim in the mainland's rivers though?" Zale asked, tone disinterested but brown eyes shoned with curiosity. Ah, he was such a tsundere. "I heard the water there is the cleanest and clearest."

"Hmm..." Fei hummed, lightly pulling at Anahita's long dark blue strands of hair. She faintly recalled of a line which she loved very much from her previous life. It was from a show or something...?

"I only swim free." With that, she swam underwater, twirling as she did. Anahita groaned, jealous of her graceful swimming.

"That doesn't even make sense!"

"Well, it's not very practical of her to go there for swimming," Anahita reasoned, waggling her finger in Zale's face. "Plus, it's not like the mainland folks would welcome us."

Zale scowled. "We're the ones helping them fish!"

"And they're the ones keeping our village afloat." Fei's head plopped out of the sea, surprising Zale as she appeared next to him. "Money makes the world go round."

"Well, it shouldn't."

Anahita shot Zale a patronising look. "You'll understand when you're older."

"You're just a year older!" He glared and splashed water into her face. Anahita gasped, her face contorted into a 'You did not just do that' expression. Zale raised his eyebrow in a 'So what if I did?' manner.

She cracked her knuckles. "Game on, bro." And let the splashing ensue.

Fei just sighed fondly. Kids.

Then her face got hit with water.

"Oops," Zale taunted, "my hands slipped." Anahita laughed at Fei's disgruntled face.

Fei only kicked water at them in response.

That day was an ordinary windy day. But it always seemed that terrible incidents happen on ordinary days.

Fei trudged home, feet wet and hair dripping water all over the ground. Villagers who knew her shook their head fondly when they realized she went swimming again.

It was already evening, and her friends had went home. Fei's house was further away so she took her time, hoping her clothes would dry before reaching.

She played with a lock of her hair. She could never get over how all the villagers had shades of blue for their hair color. The Irvette family had a shade of pale blue while her friends had a vibrant dark blue. But if there was one thing she stood out for, it would be her distinct blue eyes.

See, the funny thing was that for eye colors, most villagers had brown or black. But for generations, only the Irvette family had blue eyes of different shades. Folklores said it was because her ancestors really were friends of the sea, and they had met with the sea guardian and were blessed with blue eyes as a sign of the guardian's protection.

She laughed. It was nice to think of having the sea guardian look over her but such things did not exist. If it did, she might as well say magic existed as well. Her pale blue eyes, matching her hair, gazed up.

"Crap, it's already this late! Mom's gonna have a stroke!" Fei dashed home.

Before she could reach home though, blazes of fire met her eyes. Fei's eyes widened in horror.

In front of her, the section of the village closer to the mainland was burning. Smoke billowed, and frantic villagers were running away. She saw a large group of men with various weapons standing in the midst of all.

"Raid this village! Kill all the people!" The men roared in agreement. Fei froze as she watched a few men produced fire out of nowhere.

'How-? That wasn't possible-!' Her thoughts were cut off when a hand dragged her, pulling her away from the chaos.

"Dad!" Fei nearly cried in relief. "What's happening?"

Lang didn't say anything, he just continued to pull his daughter before hoisting her up on his shoulder and ran. Fei could only watch the horror happened behind them. Adults were getting slaughtered and kids were crying and people just kept running-

"Dad! Where's mom?" He still remained silent and Fei could feel her heart drop. Eventually, they reached the sea, where she saw several kids and elderly on boats. Lang put her into one of the boats and kissed her on the forehead.

"Fei," Lang spoke for the first time, voice tinted with sadness and love. "Be safe. We love you."

"Dad-" Fei cried. "Dad- I- I don't understand-" But she did. She did. And she didn't want to. Because if she understood, that meant this was real and this was happening and she was leaving her family-

Lang gave a smile. "Swim free, Fei."

He took out a dagger and ran back to the fire.

"DAD!" But it was too late, people were already rowing the boat away from home.

It always seemed that terrible incidents happened on ordinary days. That day was an ordinary windy day and Fei cried at the normalcy of the world while chaos ravaged her home.

"Over there!" In the distant, she could see the murderers spotted their boats. Fire lit up in their hands again, and they literally fired.

"Swim free, Fei."

Fei did what she did best.

She jumped off the boat and swam.