winds assaulted my skin, wrapping itself around my ankles and legs. I clutched my arms around my body for warmth and my sister did the same. Our teeth already chattered before our toes touched the murky shoreline. After a count of three, and half a second for courage, I dove into the sea and gasped. The chilling water took my breath away. My head hurt with the pain of cold. Summer looked like winter—deathly pale and desolate. We swam, fighting the cold, fighting the waves, fighting our fatiguing muscles that threatened to seize up altogether.
Summer gargled and shrieked. A sound as terrifying as the wonton waves themselves.
“It's okay, it's okay,” I lied between gulps and bubbles, “We'll swim back.”
But I could not see the shore, for the water was dark and murky and the waves crashed over my face again and again. Salt stung my eyes and no matter how much I squeezed them shut, the water continued to seep in as if claiming me as its own. Summer screamed louder, her arms thrashing the air around her, silenced only by the gurgling heaviness of water in lungs.
“I'm coming,” I said, fighting the icy burn of frozen muscles as I attempted to swim towards her. Each stroke was an impossible exertion; each gasp for air a game of chance.
But Summer was not drowning. She was waving. Her face a torrent of hopeful desperation. She glared at me, her eyes as wide as a winter moon.
“They're coming for us,” she screamed over the raging tides.
I saw it on the horizon for but a breath before the ocean rose again, obscuring my hope from view.
“A ship,” I whispered, my words cast aide by whipping wind