It's your destiny

1

The cold waves beat against my ankle while the water splashed up to my bare thighs and erected the edge of my black skirt. The sun seemed to burn on my head, and although I wore sunglasses that were far too large for me, I had to squint my eyes slightly to avoid being fully blinded.
A light wind blew through my hair, causing individual strands to fall into my face, and I could taste the salty air on my tongue. I enjoyed the silence around me, broken only by the gentle rushing of the sea in the background. With a careful step, I went a little deeper into the water, so that the warm waves now danced around my legs. The view in front of me was breathtaking and seemed to be infinity. Behind me was a small stretch of beach, which was circled by mountains. The water was tempting, and I felt the urge to go deeper into it. How would it feel to just drift on the water? I was about to take another step when I suddenly stumbled. All at once, my surroundings seemed to shake, and I was distracted for a very short moment when I heard the muffled sounds of a deep voice. But when my surroundings began to shake another time, the deep voice was quickly forgotten and I put all my concentration on not stumbling another time. Even though I had never experienced an earthquake before, I could imagine pretty well how people felt. My knees wobbled and I desperately tried to somehow keep my balance and not fall into the water. But the wobbling was getting stronger and didn't seem to be calming down at all, so I couldn't wait. I had to leave the water now. Before I could even make a move in the direction of the saving beach, the wobbling seemed to have reached its peak.

Roughly I landed on my knees and felt how stones bored into my skin. Salty drops touched my lips and I felt how my clothes slowly became full of water and began to stick to my skin. It took a while before I finally managed to stand up again. This is how the little figures in a snow globe must feel, I thought and shook my head. For a few seconds, it remained quiet around me, and at first, I thought I had made it through, but as soon as I had taken another step forward the earthquake came back. Although I should have been prepared this time, I could not keep my balance and fell again. The waves seemed to wrap around me and an invisible suction pulled me with it underwater, into the infinite stile.

Here there was nothing of the wobbling above the water surface to feel, but only the infinite and unpleasant silence of the water. Even if it was logically thought not at all possible, since I had not been so deep in the water at all, I seemed to sink further and further towards the bottom of the sea. It was as if I was trapped in my own body for a few seconds. I couldn't move and get back to the surface of the water. My arms and legs just hung weightlessly next to my body. It wasn't until I ran out of breath and my lungs began to burn that I was able to fully move my arms and legs again. As fast as I could, I rowed my arms and kicked my legs around to get back to the surface. There was no real coordination to it all.

It was a relieving feeling when I finally made it back and could gasp for air. The now cold, but still salty air, passed through my lungs and seemed to make my heart pump blood through my body faster again. The mainland had now receded into the distance and for a brief moment, I asked myself how this could have happened? I had only been ankle-deep in the water and now I seemed to be several hundred meters away from the beach. At that moment a small wave washed over me and reminded me where I was and what I needed to focus on first. I had to find something to hold on to to somehow get back to shore since I was anything but a good swimmer. At this moment I deeply regretted that I had hidden behind the large shelf during swimming lessons at school. While the other children had been happily learning to swim, I had been sitting behind the shelf looking at the old pictures of the swim team on the wall. Now I was paying for my fear and was now dependent on an object being washed past that was large enough to bring me to the beach. The problem was, that it wasn't very likely that all of a sudden such an object just passed by.

Only with difficulty did I manage to stay afloat as the waves grew stronger and stronger. The weather had suddenly changed from sunny and beautiful to stormy and scary, and dark clouds had covered the sun on the horizon. With all my strength I finally tried to swim towards the beach, because I saw no possibility of just floating on the water. I tried to remember everything I knew about swimming, but the harder I swam, the further the beach seemed to move away. I was getting more and more panicky, and the sea seemed to be getting more and more agitated. I jerked back when I hit something but quickly realized that it was a huge piece of wood. Rather, it was a door. "What?" I shouted to myself and began to realize that this wasn't happening, but before I could finish my thought, another wave hit me. At the last second, I was able to hold onto the door otherwise, I probably would have been pulled back down. I coughed as I pulled myself onto the door, desperately clutching at the edges. Seeking help, I looked around. "Hello?" My cry was caught in the loud waves. Maybe I could use the door as a kind of raft to get back to shore, I thought, slowly releasing my fat grip before I began to paddle with my hands while I was busy somehow holding onto the door. But I failed. The waves seemed to be immeasurably strong, and all at once, one caught me. In the last second, I clawed at the edges, but even that was of no use. The door was flung upwards by a wave and toppled over so that I too fell back into the water before I could gasp for air. The last thing that escaped me was a desperate cry as I was pulled back into the depths.