It was only a few weeks after the incident with the sink that I was taking a bath and began to actually think back on what had happened. At the time, I thought maybe it had been water spirits that I had seen and I tried to call them forth again with no luck of course. It hadn't actually occurred to me that I had personally had anything to do with it, possibly because my default is never to consider my own agency it seems.
Anyway, you know how they always say in books that people control their powers by really concentrating on them? Yeah I still don't get that to this day. I would say if anything it's the opposite. It's like the more I don't think about water, the more it wants to get my attention. Have you ever tried to control something by not focusing on it? It can be done, like getting a lover's attention and manipulating them into doing what you want by ignoring them, but it's not easy and it can be a little unpredictable.
The point is, it was just as soon as I had moved on from trying to call the water spirits that the water in the bathtub began to swirl and eddy around me. I stayed still and quiet, thinking that maybe one of my earlier invocations had worked, just with a delayed reaction, but as soon as I began focusing, trying to think of which one it had been, the water stopped, falling dead still. So I closed my eyes and focused on other things, like a cartoon I had watched earlier, what I had had for supper, what we were doing at school that day, and the water began to move again.
Of course it was just as I was getting excited that mother called from the other room to tell me it was nearly bedtime and that I needed to hurry up.
I spent the next several weeks taking longer and longer baths every night, trying to perfect the non-concentration. (I think my parents got a very different idea about why I had suddenly taken an interest in being alone in the bathroom so long but that didn't make sense to me for another year or so.) It was on one such night that I thought I finally really had it down. I had finally gotten the water to skip along the edges of the tub, leap out around the bathroom, dance on the surface of the mirror and return with a bound to the bath where it would curl around me like a content cat. I was utterly delighted with the development so I kept repeating the process in glee, not noticing that every time the water bounced back to the tub, it began to not just wrap around me, but tug slightly with increasing insistence.
I couldn't fail to notice though when it actually pulled me under. Panic hit and I flailed, forgetting that I was only in a few inches of water. None of that matters when you suddenly can't breathe. The water didn't hold me down but it didn't help me up either and so when I resurfaced on my own, choking and spitting it was with a distinct feeling of betrayal.
My father opened the door then and snapped at me to stop making such a mess all over the bathroom and clean up the water I had sloshed onto the floor. Let me tell you, I have never climbed out of a bath so quickly in my life, nor have I ever made sure a floor was more sparklingly dry.
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A/N: Okay, for those of you going "But where is So Today I'll Let You Go?" - I promise I actually am working the next chapter! I am hoping to have it up sometime this week! In the meantime, I apologize for my lengthy delays. ^^;