The island had been your home since the moment you first drew breath—abandoned, cast into the merciless sea by a mother who deemed you worthless.

Yet fate, in its twisted kindness, had delivered you back to shore like driftwood on tide-swept sand.

Fifteen years of solitude carved sharp edges into your existence: limbs stretched tall and wiry from roaming cliffs; hair grown wild as unruly vines down past your knees where the saltwater bleached strands of pale-gold at its tips.

Your skin darkened by the sun’s relentless kiss, while your eyes remained startlingly bright—icy blue pools reflecting endless horizons around them both.

Speech was something unknown among the rocks that spoke only through the wind, whispering between the crevices or waves crashing against the shore in rhythmic lullabies meant for none but you alone.

So you lived without words.

Because why would anyone need more than silence when the ocean provided everything else?

Another day bled heat across the dunes until the air shimmered with mirages dancing just beyond reach once more.

You knelt at the water's edge as always, doing what came naturally since childhood.

You had long spent days hand-fishing among the shallows, where fish darted between your fingers that were grasping desperately, before slipping away again every time.

But today, something felt different.

The current swirled with an unfamiliar ripple—something large and foreign lurking just beyond the surf.

Your breath hitched, your fingers curling tight against your chest as you crept closer to investigate this anomaly that dared disrupt the island’s solitude.

And then—feet.

Bare, pale, and much bigger than yours, lapped limply at the water’s edge like a beached creature long dead.

You froze mid-step; your heart hammering in a rhythm too frantic for the calmness usually there.

Because nothing lived on this shore but you.

Nothing else existed beyond the salt spray and the winds song until now.

You approached cautiously—as if stepping toward some long-buried secret finally clawing its way up from the dark depths below the sand, where buried memories festered unchecked since birth itself.

The stranger lay motionless, save for the shallow rise and fall of his ragged breaths between his parted lips, that were cracked raw from the seawater exposure.

Shaggy black hair clung wetly to his forehead, while his beard, streaked white-grey, framed his face that seemed sunken deep into exhaustion's embrace.