" Is this the first time you see her swim?” Shla’s mum asked me quietly. She was sitting right next to me, it was impossible for her to miss my tears.

“Yes.”

“Ah,” she said, she kept watching the pool for a few beats. “Do you need to go?”

“What?” I said, confused besides upset.

She turned to me, her blue eyes hard as flint. “Do you need to go?”

I was trembling slightly, but I was angry, too. What right did she have to tell me not to be upset when the person I loved had lost so much? “No.”

“Then you need to look back,” she said, and turned away from me. I followed her gaze to the pool and felt my heart stutter when I caught Shla pushing off the opposite wall once again.

I had missed her going up to the poolside on her clutches because her mum had been practically gushing about the race and her daughter’s recovery and how she was going to win despite all odds -- everybody else in the pool was able-bodied. I could see her right leg for a moment, but it wasn’t like the other leg couldn’t have been underwater or something. I forced myself not to look away this time: She was incredibly beautiful, and after a few strokes, as captivating as any animal in its element, body blending with the water that surrounded her like it didn’t recognize it as a separate substance. And then she reached our side and turned, upside down for a few endless seconds to switch directions. Her left leg ended below the round bone of her knee like someone had photoshopped reality to erase the rest of it. I blinked and she was back in the water, more competent in it than I had ever felt on solid ground with full use of all my limbs. "

― , From Far Away To Very Close