Title: Called Home
Fandom: Lovecraft Mythos
Rating: Teen
Length: Just shy of 1000 words
Notes: Original female character, no particular warnings apply other than vague creepiness... Thanks to curtana and tethys123 for betaing :)
Summary: When she was young, she felt an affinity for the sea, though she’d never seen it in person.

Called Home

When she was young, she felt an affinity for the sea, though she’d never seen it in person. They lived in the middle of the country, as far from any ocean as they could get. But she watched it on television, in movies, on the internet, in books, anywhere she could. She begged her parents to take her, but they seemed uneasy, and put her off with vague promises.

She picked a university on the coast - she was clever and won a scholarship and that was that - despite parental pressure to stay closer to home (to stay inland), she finally had her wish. At first, it was enough to know it was there - she would catch glimpses of it as she traveled around the city, and in some parts the smell of it hung heavy in the air. She’d go to the beach on weekends or holidays with friends. The current was too fast, and the water a little cold, for swimming, but she could wander the shoreline, and wade up to her ankles.

She stayed over the summer, taking a job waiting tables at a cafe down by the boardwalk, catering to summer tourists. If she arrived early in the morning, the beach was still deserted, and she could stand in the tide, barefoot and eyes closed, the sound of waves and gulls filling her ears. Hungry waves stole away the sand beneath her feet, pulling her slowly, inexorably, deeper.

As the summer progressed, she lingered longer, dislodged from her reverie only by the arrival of morning tourists, or annoyed calls from her coworkers up the beach that she was running late. They liked her well enough at the start of summer, but noted her growing more antisocial over time. She might come out to a beach party or two, but she’d wander away from the bonfire, knee deep in the ocean, disdaining other company. Her parents worried when she stopped answering their calls - she’d stopped carrying her phone with her to the beach, then to work, then at all.

When term started up again in the fall, she couldn’t shake her morning ritual. Early classes interfered, but while at first she did her best to keep up her studies, the ocean pulled at something in her gut, and she couldn’t eat, couldn’t concentrate without her daily visits. Despite the cooling of weather and water, these grew longer. Her professors scorned latecomers, so why bother? Her education seemed less important now - a career might mean less time for herself, or worse - returning inland. Her father came to visit unexpectedly, and they fought. She wouldn’t come home, she couldn’t explain, and yet he seemed to know. He told her that her mother was afraid for her, but she imagined he meant only a mundane fear. What could there be to fear?

Before he left he hugged her, and told her that they loved her, and missed her. But some part of her reviled him, and wanted to recoil from his touch. Confused, she returned to the ocean, where everything seemed more certain, and sat on the beach as the tides swirled up around her, soothing and frigid. She moved, to be closer to the sea, and didn’t send them her new address.

The dreams that began that fall were not nightmares, but she awoke distressed, feeling shaky, hot, and dry. Sometimes she had trouble breathing, as though the air in the apartment was suffocating her. Without thinking, she made her way to the sea. The breezes and moist air revived her to some extent, and she went and sat in the surf zone, feeling she could breathe again. They came more and more frequently, and sometime in the mornings she awoke there with no memory of leaving her home.

By mid term it was clear she was destined for academic probation, but she didn’t care. She stopped going to the rest of her classes, and missed the rest of her tests. She tried to find another job close to the sea - if she didn’t visit it regularly, couldn’t smell the salt in the air, she was seized by terrible headaches. She started wading further out, despite the dangers - the cold salt water what the only thing that soothed her. The city air was stifling, and oppressive, and left a foul taste in her mouth. She tried to wash it out with salt water, cupping her hand and letting the tide provide her with healing libations. She bottled it, and carried it with her to cool her fever.

Her parents had discouraged her from learning to swim, but the impulse to try was growing. On new moons she crept down to the beach at night and stripped herself. She floated in the shallows, and imagined she heard voices calling to her as the water lapped against her ears. They called her daughter and crashed over her face like caressing fingers - she drank them in, never afraid of drowning.

She never found a job that suited, and her money ran out. She abandoned her apartment, and learned where to hide herself during the day - close to the beach. People looked past her in the street. A miasma of salt and the sea and death enveloped her, her clothes were crusted with it, shells and seaweed tangled in her hair. She couldn’t see the sallow greyish cast of her skin, the way the flesh bagged and rippled around her neck. She wouldn’t have cared.

Now came the push along with the pull, in the looks of disgust she encountered. She loathed them. The ocean loved her. It sang to her. It brought relief and comfort. It was where she belonged. She let its currents carry her away, swallowing it, taking it in to her, becoming part of it. There was no time, only the ocean. She turned over, and looked and saw home. She reached for its embrace, and never looked back.