When Breath Becomes Air Novels & Stories

My right eye was a fog of gray, and my left side was a furnace of atrophied nerves, but the breath in my son's lungs was now a secured asset. I breached the door, finding Leo huddled on the floor. Kael was awake, his hand hovering over the iron wire I’d used to seal the entrance. “I have the breath, Leo,” I murmured, the words staying stuck in my scoured throat. I snapped the canister into the room’s ventilation vent. The hiss of clean, silver-salt air was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. Leo gasped, his small lungs expanding as the parchment-crush sound in his chest finally went quiet.

I just stayed exactly where I was and kept my eyes on hers and let my voice be the steadiest thing in the space. "Breathe out first," I said. "Don't try to breathe in yet. Just let the air out slowly." She tried. It came out shaky but it came out. "Good. Now on, Slow, Don't rush it." She breathed in. Still short, but a little deeper than before. "Out again. Same pace."

She couldn't breathe, she wanted to but she couldn't. Or was it that she could finally breathe? Had she finally found her breath after two years? Did she even know what breathing was like? She has not breathed properly for so long now. The feeling of cool air through the nose, passing along the throat and into the lungs; yes, this was what she felt, alive.

Not understanding how I could breathe when his huge cock shoved deep down my throat. It soon became clear when my nose took over that he meant to remind me I could still breathe. I took him deeper earning myself a rather crude word that forced its way out of Jordan's lips. His breathing had become ragged, and his body was moving with me trying its hardest to be thrust deeper into my mouth. I did it again and again, each time remembering to breathe through my nose; each time taking more and more of him in until he did actually hit the back of my throat again. Half fearful, I prepared myself to start gagging once more.

She couldn't, her own breath a series of short, useless gasps. "Okay," he said, his voice unshaken. "New plan. We count. Breathe in with me. One... two... three... four." He breathed in deeply, demonstrating. "Hold. One... two... three. Now out. One... two... three... four... five."

The nurse took her through the motions, and Laura calmed down. Inhale— and she heard more breaths. Her eyes slowly focused and found Josie, Dylan and Mike standing in a line behind the nurse, all expanding their diaphragms when she inhaled, and whooshing out air when she exhaled. It was kind of creepy.

Then, with a swift, shocking intimacy, it *entered* her. Not through skin. Through breath. She inhaled. Her lungs filled not just with air but with awareness. She could feel, suddenly, the currents high above the Temple, the way clouds were forming and dispersing, the tiny eddies created by bats flicking through the night. Every time she breathed, she felt a little more… connected. *Do not forget Me when you are not summoning storms,* Air said. *Talk to Me when you are just walking. When you are just… breathing. That is when you will learn the most.*

I close my eyes as I breathe her in, filling my lungs with her heavenly scent. I’m about to pull away when I feel her small hands on my chest, and I freeze with my lips still against her forehead. She hesitantly runs her hands up my chest to connect behind my neck, and my lungs start to burn as I realize that I had been holding my breath.

Until then: breathe. One breath at a time.

I heard James' distant voice screaming out to me. He carried me in his arms and gently set me down to rest my back up against the wall. “Aurelia, I'm here for you. I just need you to breathe” I gasped for air, no air was going in and out of my lungs “Look at me, breathe in through your nose, and exhale through your mouth.” He took my hand in his, rubbing them gently “follow my move, breathe with me please” I inhaled after he did and followed his breathing, we breath together slowly till I was able to breath on my own like a normal human.