"Who are you, Miss... Trite?" "I... am a lover of irony."

"Is that why you took on the name of the wife of Poseidon?"

She laughed, a quick chirp of sarcasm which quickly faded into disbelief.

"You're serious?" "Very."

A nervous tick, she pulled at her cloak.

"No, of course it's not...You know why I took it on, you know very well why-"

"It's okay, Miss Trite, it's a safe space here."

Her therapist put her on edge. She pushed her thumb deeper into her cloak, giving into the ladies works. Trust.

"Because it's what was yelled at me as I was set to drown, a-as the air was forced from my lungs, as my body swelled up-"

"That's enough." "No, ma'am, it wasn't enough for them."

"...And... How did this all start, Miss Trite?"

______________________________________________________________________________

Blue skies had graced their small country town on the eve that Amphitrite lost it all. Barely nine, dressed with a stare that could haunt even the most sweet of grandmas, it’s no wonder she outcast herself. It was at the river she always went to escape, staring at her reflection, picking river daisies and plucking the grass dry.

She had been cleaning her hands from the dirt that graced her callused palms, dipping them tenderly in the river, when the touched it. Her gave travelled, and met with that of a body, bloated with water, and staring back at her. Selfish little girls, however, don’t act how they should. Amphitrite wanted to be loved, or to feel love. Perhaps getting the body that taunted her, and rescuing it from the shore would make her known, get her recognised, make them realize that her eyes aren’t going to hurt them…

So, she dived in. Small hands clutched onto the body of a middle aged man, trying helplessly to pull him back up to shore, but the more she pulled, the more she was weighted down. Pull. Pull. Relentlessly taunted by her inability she came up for air. Her jacket came off, and she dove again, tying it to the mans wrist and attempting to pull him up with the fabrics aid, however it got tangled around her wrist.

Air. Air. Amphitrite struggled. Pushing, heaving, trying to escape the jackets mighty wrath. And that was when it happened. The river’s flow became more feverish, the force pulling the girl away from the body, snapping the fabric and shoving her down-stream. Amphitrite screamed, she couldn’t breathe, water… Water everywhere.

Until she was back at shore.

The country town would say that she river saved her. They would say with her eyes she controlled the flow, or that somebody who could control the tide thought the life of a small child was not to be taken on that day.

Amphitrite thought the river was inanimate, and that the town were fools.

Days turned into weeks, and wherever Amphitirite went luck paved her way, a strange pool of water saving her fall after she stumbled off her neighbours roof, rain saving her mothers crops in the midst of what was supposed to be a drought, hell even the water drained itself when she fell asleep in the bathtub.

All of this severely freaked her out. But what really hurt the young girl were the rumours. Around they went. There were baseless rumours, like the young girl being possessed by a demon, or that she was staging some kind of performance, others said she was the victim of merciless pranks- but the favourite rumour of the town.

Was that she was being saved by the sea god himself.

Her name, which as of now does not matter, was meaningless. The town mocked her, deeming her to be ‘Amphitrite, wife of Poseidon’. She was the town jester, the town fool, the town scandal. Her parents marketed her, and Amphitrite grew a strong distaste of water.

She didn’t know it would get worse.

The day she decided not to let the names get to her was the day they decided she got enough special treatment. Classmates, zealous for attention, grabbed her in the middle of the night. Tied in a sheet and tossed in the water, the chants of ‘river witch’, ‘queen of the sea’, ‘merbitch’ collapsed  upon her as she had tried to fight against the fabric around her. The cold embrace of the river swallowing her form whole. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe. Air, she craved. So badly it was needed. Bubbles cloaked her vision due to her kicking, her mouth opened in a relentless scream.

No sea god was going to help her.

The teens who had been mocking her saw this. Perhaps it was just another lucky break that they decided to let her out, to even dare apologise and run off, leaving the girl in her nightgown, throwing up on the side of the river. Perhaps it was a joke that as soon as she opened her wide-set eyes in terror towards the river small licks of the current moved to meet her skin, as if trying to direct an apology to her, to comfort her. Instead, she wept even harder.

That. Is when she started to call herself Amphitrite.

Hydrophobia is what the therapists called it. She was eighteen, away from the country and in a place that wouldn’t cloak her with whispers of bullshit. After a water dispenser burst on her and she broke down she was sent to a therapist, which is when she was told of her PTSD, of her water trauma. Of her phobia.

She embraced it. Ironically, she kept the name utilised to ridicule her, wanting to forget the past name she had once bore. Through polite conversation and nervous plights she found herself in a place where most people would dread to be. But somebody who was fuelled by fear, by a drive to escape and to push past whatever trauma inhibited her, soon found herself on the doorsteps of Dark Steel.

And that?

That is the start of her new life.