Wheeling Gull Isle paperback dreams in their deep dose,

water timelines :o @Caracal 

ava had gone to look for abel — gone now, without a trace. 

she thought of psalm as she forded the landbridge. how gracefully her fins must cut through seawater, while ava’s flopped!

the water rose to meet her, each grey wave wizened by choppy white tips. 

her small figure could be seen bobbing in the blue — but the more she pedaled, the harder the current worked against her. 

suddenly, the shore was very far away — the work of a riptide which had whisked her out plumb into the open bay. 

she struggled and kicked in the rising water, but she was so tired. she tried to orient herself but now sweetharbor’s shoulder was turned away, made cold by distance. 

all of her senses were filled by the hungry lap of waves. 

a dark shape rose from the water some several hundred yards from her. ava squinted, mistaking it for some sort of flotsam until a noise erupted from it that had her waterlogged ears pin instinctively. a gout of white spray shot from it, and then the fin disappeared in the water. 

she whined anxiously; every gasp was now a fight for survival. her legs slowed. her lungs burned. a rising sense of panic set in. 

 more than once a wave slapped right over her, pulling her into the undertow. 

and then, suddenly — a force she could not describe for the impact of it knocked her clean out —