Stiles goes to the Ocean. It feels like coming home.

She steps onto the sand, and she feels a ripple of something. A Consciousness that presses against hers, so much larger than the minds of salamanders and frogs, their warm presences as much a part of herself as her own thoughts. They orbit around her like stars swirling around an endless galaxy, tiny points of light that only further illuminate the vastness of her consciousness.

This new presence billows out, ripples extending to the farthest reaches of her mind.

It wraps around her, not like a cage, but like a cloak. It flows around her like the water that has soaked into her very bones, trails behind her like the robe of a queen, frothing around her ankles like sea foam.

Stiles' mind expands, and suddenly she is the vastness of the ocean.

She is the current that pulls the fragile vessels that dare traverse her into the cold embrace of the sea, she is the killer instinct of the orca, as she bloodies the water with the life of her prey. she is the seal, caught in the orca's maw, trying desperately to escape, even as she feels her flesh and muscles rent apart, even as her lifeblood spills into the cool water, she struggles.
She sinks.

Stiles' body collapses into the tide.

Stiles is the rain, high above the earth, as it begins to pour down. She is the rivers and streams, as they surge with the sudden downpour. She is the muddied waters that break their banks in a frenzy, swallowing anything that dares stand in her way. She feels the lakes as they expand, touching the edges of the mountains they once drowned, eons ago. She feels the water that pumps desperately through her own veins.

She opens her eyes.

The ocean is still as she rises to her feet, her eyes distant with the memory of water, flowing over the earth in the endless cycle that began at the birth of the world, and will stretch on until the ocean boils away, as the sun swallows the earth, and the sun itself is swallowed by the ravenous maw of the universe.

Stiles stands in the surf, memories of eons receding with the tide, and she smiles.

(There is salt heavy on her tongue, but all she tastes is triumph.)