Children are known to be pure, always seeing the world with wonder, seeing the fascinating areas of things that are mundane to others. They are carefree, not concerned with problems others may face, or that they themselves may face at some point. When does that change?

The soft thumping of small feet through plush grass was radiating through the air, met with excited laughter from small children, each waiting for their game to begin. Towering trees lined the large yard, their shadows ominously reaching for the children, like poisoned veins. However, they didn’t feel afraid, encouraged by a greater purpose: winning.

I watched the group scatter into their hiding places, like a school of fish when noticing a predator. a younger version of myself grinned, scuttling her way across the large yard as well.

As I saw a spot by the playset across the border of the yard, my head turned as I trotted along. My eyes fell on a porch next to the house, which completely fascinated me. The soft glow of the lights lining the porch made the scene look enchantingly beautiful. I couldn’t have noticed the shadow swimming closer to me.

   Quicker than I could react, a whooshing noise to the side of me, which I would later discover was a golf club, transformed into a thud, being instantly matched with a sharp pain in the side of my head. I’m sure I screamed, as my throat burned when I fell to the ground in shock. I blinked for a moment, the pain making tears very quickly pool in my vision.

“Mom...Dad…” I muttered out loud, to nobody in particular. I knew that I needed to find them, so I pushed past the shadows about to surround me and quickly scampered to the garage where I knew they would be.

My father approached me first, seeing me crying, and asked me what was wrong. I turned my head in response, and he gasped. Apparently, blood had run down the side of my head, a site looking beyond horrifying.

Dizziness hit me in waves as I was rushed into the house, and into a bathroom. For a moment, as everyone left the bathroom in order to get supplies, a wave of dread chilled me, brought on by a single thought.

What if I die?

My entire body froze.

I knew enough to realize that the blurriness in my eyes wasn’t normal, and wasn’t just from crying. And my hands were shaking. They hadn’t done that before, why were they doing that? I felt sick and absolutely terrified.

What if my mom and dad didn’t come back in time? What if I never saw either of them again?  Where was my brother?

Like a shark circling its prey, my fears were swirling through my head, waiting to consume me.

I was nothing but a young girl, crying to herself, faced with a much too mature fear of death.

Since I was so caught up in my own head, and on the shark teeth far too close to my throat, I didn’t notice my mom enter the bathroom again. I did, however, when a feeling of ice-hot cold shot through my entire body. I pushed away at the source, which was my mom, holding a towel of ice to the site of the injury.

Tears streamed down my face, and, for the moment, the sheer discomfort of the low temperatures distracted me from my fear. The shark had slowed its swimming.

From that point, things did blend together, and I still have a hard time remembering how I ended up in the waiting room of an emergency care center. The shock of the moment had left me, and I was extremely exhausted, my entire body felt heavy.

The shaking of my hands had slowed, appearing to be more of a slight shiver from cold, like the feeling of being lifted out of shark-infested waters, and being chilled by the cooler winds above the surface.

It seemed that I could see a shark tail waving in the distance, not quite saying farewell, but rather ‘until the next meeting.’

As the creature disappeared into the distance, I felt my lungs expanding and contracting, my heart beating, and for the first time in my life, I thought about how beautiful that was. Breathing.

Living.