The Scottish haar, a thick, rolling mist, clung to the moors like a damp shroud. Seventeen-year-old Tilda, all lanky limbs and fiery red hair that defied the rain even when it wasn’t raining, strode through it with the determined gait of a seasoned traveller. The air was thick with the smell of peat and wet heather, a scent she found oddly comforting. She craved the cold, sharp bite of the Findhorn River; a baptism of sorts, a cleansing from the anxieties that coiled tight in her stomach like a restless serpent.

School, with its stifling expectations and suffocating social hierarchies, felt a million miles away. The dramatic arts society, her only sanctuary, had begun to feel less like a refuge and more like another stage upon which she was expected to perform. It was all performative, wasn't it? The friendships, the aspirations, even the grief. Only here, in the raw, uncompromising beauty of the Highlands, could she truly breathe.

She reached the riverbank, the roar of the water a steady, almost hypnotic drumbeat. But the scene that greeted her wasn’t one of solitary contemplation. In the middle of the swirling, icy current, sat a girl.

Not drowning, not struggling, simply sitting.

The girl was partially submerged, the water reaching just below her shoulders. Her dark hair was plastered to her face, obscuring her features, but Tilda could see the gleam of wet skin, the curve of a shoulder, the unwavering stillness of her posture. The wind whipped around them both, but the girl seemed impervious to the cold, an enigmatic figure sculpted from the river itself.

Tilda hesitated. Should she call out? Offer help? The girl looked so… deliberate.

Finally, she found her voice, a hesitant croak against the river’s roar. “Are you alright?