The Tide by Christopher Hall
“ The Ocean reclaims all souls . Beit man , or bird , or beast . They all submit in the end , when the tide comes in .”
-Unknown
“ How long has it been ,” thought Thomas Giles after regaining consciousness . How long has it been since they brought me here ? How long have I been out ? He knew very little . All he remembered was the heat and exhaustion being too much for him to bear . It was morning , maybe , when everything went black around him . The gentle splashing of briny water must have woken him from his involuntary slumber .
He looked around him , trying to regain mastery of his own memory . To his left , he could only see the same dreaded sight he vaguely remembered from earlier in the day . It was the same cursed rock he was brought to at dawn . Giles felt then , as he did now , that this was an ungodly site . Even the look of it seemed unnatural , as though the Lord himself had stacked colossal bricks in the ocean , miles away from any form of civilization , with the sole intention of this becoming a damned spot to torment the lowest forms of humanity .
His eyes scanned down from the layered limestone above his hand to see rusted chain that connected his shackled , blistered , wrist to some unknown point buried under the unnatural pile of rocks some people called an
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