Being adrift is ay-okay when the company is this exquisite.
Adrift in this blue expanse with you is my paradise.
The shoreline has become a figment, as if it evaporated in the heat. I wonder if now the world is but one ocean, the waves moving freely, gathering pace. Perhaps that's what happens when you are adrift, you fear that the perfect circle of blue is all that exists. It feels as if the wind comes to bring some sensation of touch, a soft hello from nature. And I have learned, in this desert of company, that it is better to let the brain be as empty as that horizon rather than to suffer loss of hope and the tide of emotions it brings.
Through my closed lashes the sun-rays still shine. The ocean laps around my torso and bobs my legs in the current, wetting my arms that cling to this life-preserving chunk of what was once a fine boat. It is curious I suppose to be baked from above and chilled from below simultaneously. My ears pick up every sound and there is no detectable song from an engine or indeed anything manmade. The lapping of the waves are as good as any ticking clock, marking out the time into neat little portions. With each one a little more heat leaves my limbs, a little more hope dissolves with the salt. There is apart of my brain that thinks if it only tries hard enough it can will all this to be a dream. In this fantasy the breeze becomes a nonchalant gust from my bedroom window, fresh and welcome. Indeed, without rescue my night will come faster than the setting of the sun, though I have no intention of going with any grace. I dangle not to forlornly release my life, but to conserve energy for the fight ahead.
So odd that in this vastness of water the land is just ten feet below the boat, rising to a ridge before plummeting to unseen depths. With the clearness of the water I can see the rocks. I could dive and resurface, but for how long? I feel my eyes begin to close under the steady heat of the sun and dreaming taking over from real thought. I just pray as the carousel of ideas begins that this vessel drifts toward a shore.
In the middle of otherwise unbroken water there is a boat, an old fisherman's rowboat. At first it appears empty, but Ryan isn't so sure. The boat moves more as if it were weighted down and he tells the others to keep out of sight under deck. He's right. Whoever the wretch is they were set adrift as a means of death, wrists and ankles bound with thick rope.
Casey rests his head on the side of the boat and watches the moving water, feeling the bobbing of the boat with every part of his being. Soon enough the dehydration will kick in, he knows it. As the sun-rays sear into his skin he waits for the hallucinations to begin.
Darla's favourite colour had always been blue. She had married in blue with cornflowers in her hair, yet now, as she drifted on the ocean under an unbroken sky she lost her love for it. Other than the unforgiving sun there was only blue to see - she felt like a lover of sugar offered only sugar to eat forever.