Gentle waves brushed against the rocks of the southern California beach, the sun dipping into the ocean. Seagulls chattered as they pecked over scraps of food left on the empty beach.
Mariana jogged down the worn boardwalk, her bare feet stinging from the fading heat of the day. Glancing over her shoulder,
There’s no harm in a quick swim before morning chores. No one ever notices. I’m always back by sunrise.
Something tugs my feet. In an instant, the current drags me under and out to sea.
No!
Spinning, I cannot think. My arms flail, fighting hard against the undertow.
Which way is up?
The world swayed around me like the ocean waves, but I couldn’t feel the water’s calming caress. Pain pounded in my left temple. My eyes refused to focus. I tried to swim, yet I couldn’t lower my arms from over my head. And my tail… where was my tail?
I wiggled my toes…
Waves lapped against the ship’s hull as we eased as close to the island’s rocky coast as we dared. Even with a full moon, I couldn’t see any of the island’s inhabitants—but I could hear them.
“It’s so beautiful,” someone sighed.
Swinging around, I found a sailor walking in a trance
Behind the shrubs would be a good place. The thought flitted through his mind as Andrei and his date walked through the dimly lit park.
The dinner had gone to plan. His petite partner had ordered the crab cakes as he’d encouraged her to, and he had smothered her with dessert and charm
Some posts were lonelier than anywhere else in the universe.
The lighthouse at the edge of the Black Nebula was loneliest of all.
It existed literally in the middle of nowhere. Near no star systems. Out of the way of everything except a backroad intergalactic freightway that hardly anyone took anymore, unless the cargo wasn’t
The siren swam upward, gaze fixed on the ship hull ploughing through the ocean surface. No sunlight pierced the waves. No fish followed the stern. All had escaped the storm. All save the ship.
Alessia smiled as she imagined the frantic sailors struggling to fight nature’s fury. Struggling and failing. “Drag them down.
The stars are my guide.
It isn’t their light that I follow so much as their song. Every night, I wait for them to come out, to paint the ocean waves. Water laps against my boat, and I follow the path laid out by the celestial chorus.
If Brandy heard one more person tell her what a good wife she would be, she was going to drown a sailor.
She heaved a deep breath as she twisted her silver locket around her fingers and walked down the dark cobblestone streets. It was a paltry trinket, certainly not a token of love, though it had been given to her by the man she loved.
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