Stavanger Bay the mumbling of citadels

Sharkbait wasn't familiar with the term "zombie," yet it unwittingly suited her quite well. Although she had mostly recovered from her physical ailments, she wasn't really too many steps above catatonic when it came to her mental and emotional conditions. There was that constant anxiety, which plagued her like a chronic, low-grade fever, but very little else. Even when she wasn't struggling to unearth memories she wasn't sure were even there from the murk of her mind, Sharkbait had a hard time really focusing properly. She just felt out of it all the time, when the tension of her nerves wasn't rubbing her raw.

Presently, she sat on the beach, staring out at the waves, fair face slack and eyes fixed absently somewhere in the middle distance. She hardly blinked. But then she saw something out on the water, a black crescent that grew in size as it cut through the blue. Then there was a spout of—air? water? Sharkbait couldn't be sure—before the curving black shape grew small again and disappeared. A different shape cleaved up and out of the choppy sea, flashing white before disappearing too.

The youth sat up a little straighter, her stare much more focused now and her breath held pensively in her breast as she waited to see if the mysterious thing would resurface.