Memories Of Smoke

Prologue

She floated in the current, letting the back-and-forth motion gently sway her. Her lifeless eyes stared above her, barely blinking. Only the smallest movement of her chest indicated that she was still alive.

It would be daybreak soon.

The sky above her was fading from the oppressive darkness that had kept her company for hours, and now the sun was just visible on the horizon.

She knew she must be getting closer to the shore. The water had ceased dragging her under its depths and instead seemed to be cradling her now in a cold embrace. The temperature that had once burned along her skin no longer bothered her. Nothing bothered her anymore. After the violent events that had led her to the ocean, the peace soothed her for a few moments. She closed her eyes and wished she had the strength to let herself sink to the bottom, to end it.

She was so tired, her mind battered, her thoughts an endless spiral of anger and fear.

But here and now she could make it all go away.

No. A voice inside her whispered. Don't let him win.

She frowned, recognising the voice but also rejecting it.

Because the woman who had whispered to her was dead.

Fragments of the nightmares that had followed her all night came back to her in a disjointed loop; intangible tendrils of smoke curling through her consciousness that had been born from fire and water.

Fire.

She was fire...or she had been once. She had been before...

The thought floated away as she blinked water and something else, something red, out of her eyes.

She lifted her hand and touched her cheek, her fingers coming away coated in sticky blood. The colour mirrored the ruby red ring on her finger. She felt along more of her skin. A rough gash started below her eye and extended almost to her chin.

As she observed the red streaks on her hand curiously, she felt the flare of pain again from an injury she didn't remember getting. The pain had kept her alive though, through the darkness and the hours of drifting further away from everything she thought she had known. It had kept her awake when she had been battling the waves and the nightmares that made no sense.

Again, her body begged her for relief. It begged her to rest.

No, Swim. The same voice instructed her. The shore is right there. Swim!

She looked to her side and realised the voice was correct. She could see a small secluded beach within swimming distance.

She still hesitated. She could barely keep her eyes open. It seemed so much easier to just give up.

I may be dead but I still have secrets to tell. They are your secrets now. Keep them alive.

The words now said to her were almost a promise... or a threat.

She shuddered in the water, the cold that she had dismissed all night finally seeping into her bones. She started shivering and she knew hypothermia was imminently close.

He needs you. Find him!

It was only those two sentences that finally spurred her on.

The dead woman blessedly fell silent as she started a slow freestyle to the shore, ignoring the cold and the effort it took just to keep her head above water. Her muscles burned with each stroke through the water.

She felt relief that the voice no longer haunted her. She felt relief that the night was finally going to be over one way or the other.

She kept swimming straight, urging herself on every time her pace slowed. In her mind's eye, she didn't see the shore anymore. She saw a pair of green eyes, so deep she knew she would get lost in them if she let herself.

Her lungs laboured as she drew in desperate intakes of air. The beach still seemed so far away.

But she honoured the dead woman’s last message to her in the only way she could. She would survive. She would find him. She would keep the woman’s secrets safe until it was time to unleash them.

So on she swam.