I retched and gagged. Then another wave pounced, shoving me under the surface again. I fought to rise above it, but the water quashed me, twisted and wrung me, stifling every attempt.These emotions are too powerful. You don’t want them.Immersed, drowning, I grappled with the rushing current, too stubborn to surrender. Surfacing amid white rapids, I gasped once before plummeting over a high falls. I was pinned at its base, buried under the weight of the water pouring down on me.Yes. I. Do. They’re mine!All I had left was this fight. I curled into a ball and scrabbled for the edges of large rocks to hold on to. Using them, I wrenched myself away from the imprisoning, crushing weight of the falls. Then the current plucked me loose and whisked me away again. This time it wouldn’t let me surface.I thought of what I’d said to Menessos about being his master, about accepting it. The good and the bad. But I hadn’t accepted the good and the bad emotions of my own life. How could I balance a world if I couldn’t balance myself, couldn’t accept the good and the bad of what I had, inevitably, to face?I kicked my feet and stretched for the bottom, raking already bleeding hands along the riverbed searching for something heavy enough to anchor me.
