Cybelle 20th, 1870 AF

Recollections from Mene 15th, 1828 AF

There is a stretch of shore at Millmore which I have never been able to approach without feeling sick to my stomach. Three separate times I have walked towards it, and each time I have found some stupid reason to turn back. Once, I blamed the smell of the weed rotting, brought out by the tide.

I remember being very satisfied with that excuse.

The second time it was the weather getting bad, the third, I don't even remember why. Well after today, I can understand why. After speaking with Elspeth, for better or worse, I remember. 

I must have been hardly eighteen that day.

We have fought that day, so much our shouting was covering the thundering of the approching storm, I cannot remember what we said, but the dark stain left in my hurt, the pain I felt, is still there, she hurt me, I begged, I hurt her feeling back. The shame, the anger this guttural feeling has survived where words and thoughts have not. 

Come ot think of it, I began journaling because of the events of that night, because of what I hardly remembered, what I didn't want to forget, but did. 

What follows is all I can pull and put together after the conversation we had with Elspeth, I do not know what to feel, what to think. Once again I find my heart aching, my chest tight but the memories summoned feel, lost in time, a time so long ago... 

⠀@}-;-'--

Something was pulling at his leg.

Max tried to draw it away, scraping his cheek against stone as seawater flooded his mouth. His chest convulsed, but the first attempt to cough brought nothing except a tightening beneath his ribs. Then his body heaved, water spilled from his lips, and he dragged in a thin laboured breath that burned all the way down.

The pull came again. A wave lifted his hips and began to slide him backwards, his clothes dragging heavily around him. He spread his hands across the rock, felt weed slip beneath his palms, and caught his fingers in a crack. For a few moments he could do nothing except hold on while the water tugged at his boots.

When it receded, he pulled himself forward. One knee found purchase; the other scraped uselessly behind him. He crawled until the next wave broke short of his feet, then lay with his mouth open against the stones, too exhausted to turn his face.

There was a knocking nearby. Hollow, irregular, persistent.

He opened his eyes.

The moon, blurry as it was, stood high above the sea, full and almost painfully bright. Every wet pebble around his hands held a point of light, and the shadows beneath the larger rocks were sharp enough to look cut into the beach. Farther out, the broken water shone white beneath the all-bright Mene.

A length of timber struck a rock, floated back, and struck it again.

That was the knocking.He watched it again and again, moving in and out,

"Is this a mast?" he pondered

As his vision began to clear, with his face still flat against the pebbles he saw a broken rail caught in the shallows, a spar with rope wound tightly around it, planks turning slowly in the wash. A heap of canvas lay farther along the beach, swelling as water pushed beneath it. He stared at that for several breaths, waiting to see whether anything underneath would move.

“Elspeth!?” The name scraped his throat. He knew it before he knew why, and with it came such wild urge that he pushed himself onto an elbow.

His sister. She had been travelling with him.

He tried to picture her and found a narrow passage, a wall shifting with the motion of the ship, her face close to his. He remembered his own anger with a clarity that frightened him. He had wanted her to leave him alone. There had been something he could say that would hurt her, something he had been holding ready. Had he said it? 

He pressed a wet hand against his forehead, eyes furrowed, still burning,  but the passage was gone.

“Elspeth!”

The canvas settled. Water rattled through the shingle, and somewhere beyond the rocks a larger piece of wreckage broke with a sound like a door being forced.

He had to get up.

His first attempt brought him only as far as his knees. On the second he caught a slab of rock and hauled himself upright, then stayed bent over it while the shore tipped beneath him. 

"What is going on? Where am I?" he whispered "Elspeth!" he pushed up, his aching muscles trembling under the weight of his body. The pain was a welcomed awakening sharpening his senses. He looks around frantically. 

The beach was filled with the wreckage that could only be the ship he was on only mere hours ago. bodies were scattered all across the sand around him

"Elspeth!" he tried to shout but his voice came out weak, a pathetic whimper. 

He stumbled up, clenching his blurry eyes trying to bring the scene into focus

"Elspeth!" he tried again and the word heaved out his mouth, audible this time. He begun looking through the bodies surrounding him, 

"Too small, Solis sake, she is a kid ...  too tall, too wide ... what was she wearing" his thoughts began tumbling down his mind like a torrent. "Elspeth!" he thought looking at the lithe tall body he tried to run, he walked and crawl, stumbling over the wooden wreckage around him and fell on his knees. He grabbed her shoulders

"Elspeth!" he called as he was turning her. 

... it was not Elspeth, the young woman was motionless, frozen under on his arms. He gently put her body down and looked around in desperation 

"Where are you?" he cried out