Axel opens her eyes to find herself floating in the middle of a lake. 

She knew not which lake it was. 

Nor how she came to be where she was. 

All she knew was that she was drifting in the middle of it, and had been for a while now. 

She lifts her head and twists her body to swim to shore, only to be surprised when her feet met the bottom of the lake. 

Not much of a lake if the center is this shallow, is it? She thinks to herself. 

She stands up instead and begins wading her way to shore when a voice suddenly calls out. 

“Leaving so soon?” 

She turns around to face the speaker, only to find there to be nothing but a span of calm, rippleless water behind her, above which a thin layer of fog floated. 

It was so quiet that Axel could almost hear the sound of her own heartbeat. 

She turns back to continue back to shore, her eyes looking down into the water to avoid stepping on rocks and branches in the lake when the voice calls out again. 

“Will you just ignore me then? How rude.” 

Axel recognized the voice this time as she turned around once more. She saw nothing and no one behind her still. Nothing but fog and water.

“Mom?”, she asks. 

“Your mother, huh?” the voice replies, “Fascinating.” 

Axel narrows her eyes as she scans the edges of the lake to find the source of the voice. 

“Why is it that you people always look behind you to find whatever it is you are looking for?” the voice asks. “Why do you always believe that the answer to your unknowns lie in a place you once stood? How are you so sure that the answer isn’t before you, just a few steps away?”

Axel turns back to face the shore, looking up to find a woman in white sitting there. Her legs crossed and both arms stretched out behind her, keeping her upper body in a backwards lean.

Axel recognized the woman’s face to be her mother’s.

“Mom? What are you doing here?” she asks.

“Oh, I am not your mother, dearest Axel. I merely mimic the face and voice of the individual you share the most regrets with.

Though she is in a place far from here, and she is indeed with you. Hovering over you as you sleep.

In the place of the living.”

The woman’s words strike a thought into Axel’s mind as she blurts out in panic: “I’m dead?!?”

The woman in white tilts their head.

“Well.” the woman replies, “If you are here, I’d only assume so.”

Axel shakes her head in disbelief. This wasn’t possible, she was fine the last she remembered. Normal, except for a big argument she had with her mom about going out that night during the big snowstorm.

She had snuck out with her friends regardless, and they were drinking at a party a few hours from where she lived. They were having a good time. She even remembers her best friend Quin being there with her too.

Axel remembers Quin being a little drunk when she had gotten into the car to leave. Axel had asked Quin if she should be driving while this drunk, to which her friend had drunkenly replied with something snotty and got into the driver’s seat anyways.

Quin had drunkenly tried to drive them to the next party. Axel finally recalls. Right when the snowstorm had picked up, dousing their car in white.

“It seems you are remembering well.” the woman in white interrupts. “Your last waking moments. Though I suppose most are able to easily recall their final moments, before their descent into slumber.”

“Slumber?” Axel asks.

The woman in white waves a hand and the murky water around Axel begins swirling to form a clear image.

An image of her. In a bed. With her mother sitting beside her.

She couldn’t quite see her mother’s face, but . . . could just barely recognize that . . .

“This is a hospital.” Axel whispers.

Silence pierces the air around them as Axel’s knees buckle, plunging her lower body into the lake.

“No, no, no, no, no.” she begins, “It can’t be. Not this way.”

Axel reaches for the image of her mom in the lake, only to feel her fingers cut through the watery surface.

The woman in white stands, dusting herself off as she looks at Axel.

“No, it never is, is it?

Your time expires and you all fall into this lake, muttering the same things.

That it wasn’t meant to be. Not like that. It should’ve been different.

But you forget the simplest of truths, in your denial and the lies you tell yourselves to ease your guilt.

It isn’t up to you.”

The woman begins walking towards Axel, stopping just before the water’s edge.

“In your childish act of rebellion against your mother, over an insignificant disagreement, you decide that you would “show her”, and now there you lie.” the woman in white mocks, gesturing at the image in the water.

“You showed her indeed, didn’t you?”

The woman in white bends down so Axel could see into her eyes.

“In a moment of blindness you insisted so strongly that revenge and retaliation were your best options. But do you ever ponder the consequeneces your actions entail upon others, besides yourself, who might love and value you?

In a moment of pettiness you insisted so confidently that you are beyond reason, beyond the need of doubt, beyond even the idea that maybe, just maybe, you don’t see all there is to be seen.

Tell me, Axel, have you ever asked yourself if your life meant more to others than it did to you? Or did you tell yourself that you were truly free from the care of others.”

The woman in white stands, as Axel also struggles to her feet.

Axel looks up at the woman who wore the face of her mother. The guilt of her memories slowly creeping through her body. But the woman in white did not return her gaze.

“There is meant to be more to life, than simply chasing that which your self implores you to.” the woman in white declares.

“There is meant to be more to existence, than merely bending others to your world views, and yours alone.

There is meant to be more to people, than just the benefit they bring to your life.

Especially if they have given you their all.”

The woman in white turns her back to Axel.

“There is more to love, than simply expecting it to paid to you unconditionally.” she whispers, “Yet pay you in love your mother did. Only to have bought from you nothing but grief.”

The woman pauses for a moment before she begins walking away from Axel.

“Make peace with your end, and move on” the woman in white says casually.

“Please, I still have things I need to say to her”, Axel begs as panic engulfs her mind, “It can’t end like this. I didn’t know. I didn’t mean for the last moments between us to be that. Just a second, so I can at least tell her I know she meant me well.”

“It doesn’t work like that, Child.

You believed you knew better.

You challenged. You were answered.

You move on now. Or not at all.”

“Please.” Axel begs once more, tears clouding her vision. “Her spirit can’t take it. My spirit can’t take it.”

Axel’s legs give out as despair finally overwhelms her, collapsing her into the lake.

“So it seems you do know, to some degree. But then again, I suppose you all know, deep down.” the woman in white whispers.

But Axel had already begun sinking into the lake. She had no strength to fight the lake’s pull. No strength to resist her descent.

This was it, and that was that.

In the end she was left with nothing but a sinking feeling of powerlessness as she found her mind submerged in regret.

From above the lake’s surface she notices the woman in white come to watch her sink. She realized she never even asked for the woman in white’s name. She could just barely make out the woman still speaking to her as Axel closed her eyes.

“Know me as She Who Awaits You. The Maiden of the Ignorant.

Know me as She Who Greets All. The Maiden of the Lake.

Know me as She Who Follows All. The Maiden of Regret.”

Axel opens her eyes to find herself lying down on the bed of her own room, a gentle knocking on the door as her mother called to her from the other side.

“Axel, Honey, I just don’t think tonight is a good night to go out. I just don’t feel right about it.”

Before Axel could answer though, she notices her phone in her hand with a message on the screen from Quin that read:

“So, where we going tonight?”