Held Lost

I visited the cove whenever I could, a sparkling secret only known to me. They greeted me with splendor every time, rippling up out of the water and carrying me through the air. The white sand glittered in the sunlight, just as joyous as me and my secret friends.

No one knew where I would go on the weekends. Most assumed the worst, that I would go indulge myself. I gave them no reason to think otherwise, I would occasionally return exhausted the next morning. The next day would not be one of those days, this day I laid peacefully among my watery friends who danced about the calm shore.

An enormous screeching blot cast a bestial shadow over us. My friends dove back into the water, disappearing. The aphotic mass in the sky rushed towards the beach, the indistinct din becoming thousands of individual screams all cutting over one another. Countless shards of deep amethyst ravens raked at the sky while biting each other on their descent.

Just before they would have enveloped everything, one of my friends sprang from a wave and covered me. I was tossed off my feet as the land under me buckled to the force of the cloud’s impact. I called to my friend through the sudden onset of darkness. There was no response.

I could hear them, those horrors. They racked stone and sand all around me, their hysterical cries tearing my ears asunder. I spat sand from my mouth, calling out again to my friend. No response. The constant barrage made my whole body tremble on top of my fear.

Shards of something sharp embed themselves into my body, my cries unheard even to myself. My body convulsed with another shard cutting deep into my shoulder. Another two cut into my back, and another into my neck. With each stab, I could feel less and less. My body stiffened, unable to flee from the five, twenty, hundred shards all slicing into me.

…When I came to, my eyes were already open. I couldn’t move any part of my body, not even my eyes to look around. I couldn't feel anything either, not the heat of the sun, the sand under me... No, it wasn’t sand. My eyes were transfixed on the horizon of the ocean. No matter how hard I tried to look around, they wouldn’t obey. I told my body, demanded it, to move. I laid where I was.

From my peripheries, I could see it wasn't sand that I laid upon, but some kind of black shattered sludge that argued with light. The waves lapped with sorrow at, not the shore but, a beach of crystal water growing from the sludge. And above me… was my friend. They were the same crystal water, unmoving.

The day eventually fell below the horizon, and darkness overcame us. The day rose again, fell, rose, fell, and rose. Time became lost to me. I thought maybe someone would search for me, but nobody came. So, there I stayed, lost to time in a forgotten cove, waiting for the world to end.