Another shitty day on this vacation without his gadgets has bled away, leaving the beach to the moon and the whispers. A great, luminous pearl of a moon hung in the sky, its light not illuminating so much as anointing the world. The ocean was a breathing darkness, a sheet of black silk upon which a thousand shattered mirrors glittered. Each wave was not a crash, but a long, sibilant sigh as it unfolded onto the shore, the white lace of foam glowing with a phantom light before being sucked back into the gloom. The air was thick with the sweet, cloying perfume of plumeria, a scent that seemed to be the very soul of the night given smell. Here, time felt suspended, the world holding its breath between one wave and the next. Quinn was sitting on the white chaise longue, his white hotel blanket draped lazily over hig legs in his shorts, as his sky-bue eyes stared at the hypnotizing waves splashing its contains on the sand and hitting his legs gently, ticking them with tiny droplets.

His eyes eventually shifted to the figure in the water, just walking, their hands in the water, moonlight hitting their wet hair and shoulders as they walked past, and Quinn found himself strangely drifting his gaze after them, not even expecting himself he as mesmerized at that figure as at the waves and dolphins quite back at the horison.