2020-02-22 - What The Sea Returns

Her eyes flew open suddenly; clear, wintry skies fill her vision, white spools of cotton streaking over the endless, crystal blue expanse. Daggers of ice and frost hit her skin almost immediately at the wash of the Pacific's cold grasp underneath her, drawing sand away and causing her to tilt.

She didn't have to really look to know that she was on the shore.

The early morning rays of the day speared through the sparse cloud cover, providing little warmth to her hungry skin. The act of waking was itself a trial, feeling her teeth chatter near immediately once her body was conscious enough to register the precipitous drop of her temperature. Isabella forced herself to roll to her side, coughing saltwater into the ground to join the rest of the wake swirling back into the ocean - still alive, despite the odds. Her fingers balled in a tight fist; the coarseness of the surf and how it bit at her skin was a comfort.

Get up.

The rest of her felt unforgivably heavy, but she pushed herself to her front. Elbows and forearms dug into the coast in an attempt to lever herself upwards. It felt like climbing Mount Everest. Labored breaths left her in spectral puffs - as if her very life was trying its damndest to escape her body. Lifting her head, her blurry vision caught sight of The Surprise, its gleaming white lines soaking up the richer colors of the sunrise. They looked so far away.

Her shoulders hunched. She forced herself on her knees, spine arching backwards to tilt her head back. It was as if movement rattled something loose when the events from the night before started spilling into her brain, reminding her that Javier had intended to kill her, or worse, and that her grand solution to all of it had been to return them both to the sea. She took some small comfort in the memory of the man returning to himself seconds before they hit the dark water. Before they sank together.

It was so fucking cold.

Was he even alive?

She didn't know for certain, but she knew him. The world could end right now. We could all be dead and gone, and he'd still be around, hanging out with five cockroaches.

She took another breath, and another, before forcing herself on her feet with a grunt. Her arms twisted around herself, paltry, insignificant measures to ward away the cold and add some color back to the bluish tint of her skin. As she slowly reclaimed her vision, her eyes fixed on the distant docks, right on the point where she thought she last saw Alexander yesterday. Not sure if brain damage or wishful thinking, she had told Easton just a couple of days ago.

Some sort of damage at the very least, came the self-deprecating thought.

Trembling fingers found her phone, unable to unlock it. She wasn't generating enough body heat for the touchscreen to register her attempts.

"Ugh. Happy hump day to me, I guess, because I sure feel f--" Another bout of chattering cut off the rest of the comment. Slowly, carefully, painfully, she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Over and over, again and again. Until she reached her houseboat, however long that was going to take. But if anything felt good at the moment, it was her relative confidence that she would get there eventually.

She'll try August later.