_I just have to make it to the other side. _This is the thought I keep telling myself. My feet are rooted to the side of the lake. Getting to the other side is more than just finishing this race I’ve involuntarily started. I didn’t choose to be here. I would not have wanted to be part of this but my family needs me to finish.

There have been so many tests and challenges in this race its almost ridiculous. If I can just get to the other side then I will be able to find the Heart of the Worlds. This is the last piece I need to finish the race but I can’t seem to cross this lake.

Ever since I was a little girl the water has scared me. My older sister and I used to go out onto the lake in a canoe every summer. We would fish, and swim and waste the days away. Thinking back to that time it was some of the happiest times of my childhood right up until she drowned. Every time I even so much as look at a pool of water bigger than a puddle I see her lifeless eyes staring back at me.

With my feet rooted to the shoreline, feet purposefully not touching the frozen lake surface, I see her eyes. They’re pleading with me, to save her.

_Dammit _ I can’t even see a frozen lake without her plaguing my every thought.

It’s not like I dont want to finish the challenge and see my family fed for the next cycle. It’s not like I dont want to get over my older sister dying eleven years ago. I do. I want that almost more than anything but the second I see water, apparently in any form, I am thrust right back to that day. I am forced to live that day.

It seems that no matter how much time passes I’ll live with this guilt, these memories, until I die.

If I can’t cross this lake…well I dont really want to think about that. So I shove it down as best I can where it’s wedged right up next to the memories of my sister. She would want me to finish. My family is counting on me.

So I take one step out onto the ice. Testing it. It seems to hold me, so I shift my weight and it still holds. I can’t think about the ice cracking. I can’t think about my sister. I have to think about the family I have left. I have to think about my little brother who doesn’t even know what is going to happen if I fail.

With only one foot on the ice I raise my eyes to look at the distant horizon. It’s frozen like everything around us. Frozen like I have to make my heart so it will quit thudding in my chest. I very slowly take one more step onto the lake. Weight still holds, and I dont hear any cracking.

My mind wants to think that we will never cross this lake, that it will crack and we’ll drown just like my sister. But my body is rebelling against that Idea, It seems to be saying, “ we can do this” and now I am paralysed from more than fear.

My mind and my body are at war. Go forward, or go back. Those are my options and I can’t choose. Choosing one over the other will mean I am giving up on the sister I wish I still had, and choosing the other means I forfeit the rest of my family’s survival.

You’d think this an easy dicision, one foot in front of the other until I reach the other sidle and claim the relic as my own. But this frozen body of water means so much more to me than that.