Blackwater Islands the man with the umbrella

one moment had been sun and gulls and breeze. voices chanting loud above one another. celebrations of some sort.

the next was a gap.

then there was the here and now. washed ashore and unable to tell up from down. disoriented, slick with saltwater. and the ocean still nipped at her toes as the rolling waves reached inland, as if they might take her back.

this she refused with a groan, raised herself upright. poorly blinked herself back into some minor semblance of life.

only to be greeted with the dark.

night had fallen some time ago.