Mai Griffin
As the shadows deepened, he gradually became aware of
sounds nearby: the lazy trickle of water: the faint hiss of wind
through dry leaves. A memory surfaced; vibration …a throbbing
engine? No, it was gone! He hovered unhappily between a
shifting chimera and devastatingly dark oblivion that, on the
brink of recollection, repeatedly frustrated his fleeting fronds of
memory before they could solidify.
A sudden stab of certainty startled him out of his inertia. He
had been in the cabin of a boat. It was night. Stealthy footsteps
betrayed someone moving on the deck above. Moonlight
penetrated the shadows, revealing a halo of fair curls framing the
delicate face of a child, pathetically small – and transparently
white in death. The shocking impact of the vision broke his
fragile hold on reality. Yielding again to the pull of the sable
black void, he heard his own impotent howls of anguish mingling
with the frightened cries of a child.
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