Prologue

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I could feel my world tumbling and cracking beneath me; the large black abysses were waiting menacingly to swallow me up. Despite these outside factors, inside I was numb- the world no longer existed to me. Everything had ceased to prevail through my young body. My hands were frozen, my breath barely evident, yet laboured as I uttered mournfully.

"Drew." The single syllable escaped my lips over and over. It was the only word that my body seemed to know. It was the only thing that mattered.

My eyes remained transfixed to that one detail in front of me. I desperately wanted to disconnect my gaze from it, to break the connection that it held. Yet, it remained, never blinking. It was as if my mind was trying to consume every small detail of the scene in front of me, to fix it into my memory; while my heart pleaded hopelessly with me to look away. It was easy for me to understand that I should not have been witness to something like this, but now that I had been put in that position, I was unable to withdraw myself from the scene presented to me.

Muffled voices spoke in the background. They were hushed, but were evidently troubled themselves by the situation before them. Mere moments later, I could have sworn that I had seen a slight movement. It was barely visible, but I was certain that my eyes were telling the truth. Nobody else had appeared to notice it, they were oblivious to the strange happening just metres from them.

I rushed forward, tears suddenly filling my eyes. Their saltiness stung my skin, but I surged forward through the cordon which had previously separated me from the cause of my immense pain.

Once again, a slight raise, barely noticeable; invisible to those who were not as connected as I was. A torrent of tears flooded down my cheeks as cold touched cold and it lowered once more. A stray hair was pushed from my eye and to the side of my face, but that day there had been no wind. My eyes were focused on the area where the minute movement had taken place. That was it, despite how much I hoped and prayed and even pleaded; that was it.

The sea lapped against the shoreline, majestic looking and gleaming in the early morning sunlight. Few people had been witness to its dark side, the side that would be firmly disguised when families played in it and boats sailed across it. The evilness and vengeance it held for a select few masked by its superficial beauty. Unfortunately for myself, I would never know somebody else who held it in such high regard as that which my eyes were still focused had done.

The voices behind me had become louder. It was becoming increasingly hard to drown them out, to force them from my world. I was acutely aware that it would not be long until I would have to leave this place. I did not want to do it- it went against every moral fibre of my being, but I knew that when I did, I would dread the moment that I had to return once more.

In a desperate bid to prolong my time there, I wrapped my frigid arms around the limp body beneath me. Each of our clothes were still soaked, drenched from our final moments in the waters which had previously been loved so deeply. Hands surrounded my waist urging me upwards, but all I wanted to lay back down beside the person who knew me better than anyone else in the world. My lips touched the icy cheek and I whispered my promise into the ear, the promise that we had always kept.

Soon after I was pulled to my feet, as my hands edged out from beneath the ocean's enemy, I watched it fall soundlessly back onto the sand. I desperately willed it to fight, to regain the spark that I knew it possessed so strongly. No matter how hard I tried, it had no effect on the lifeless bundle of cells before me.

The strong arms pulled me away as they promised that everything would be okay and that I would get through it. I didn't fight to be returned to the shoreline, suddenly I had lost all of my energy. I wanted nothing more than to crawl into a ball and cry my eyes out until there were no more tears left.

My whole world had been shattered. Worse still, it had been destroyed and torn apart by the thing that each of us had taken such immense joy in. The waters which had first connected us had separated us and nothing would be able to fix that. A piece of me ceased to exist the moment that the sea took that final decision and ended the life of my best friend.

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