Kolandra had heard many stories about death before. It was all around. Every night, her mother would rock her baby brother to sleep in a corner of their wooden house singing a lullaby about the passing of her sister and father. How those who aren’t here with us physically are never truly gone. She heard the truth in her mother’s voice, deep as a cello and accented by the flute-like whistling of the wind passing through cracks in the birch walls her great-grandmother constructed years before.
The girl understood death to be as natural as living. And ever since the enormous beasts returned to once again ravage the small island village her family had called home for generations, she'd steeled her heart to prepare for her time to come. She'd close her eyes and imagine death as a maroon boat arriving to take her across seas that glittered like crushed velvet in the night. Death would rock her to sleep on this voyage away from the island and into the realm of adventure. Back into the embrace of her father.
But now, as the ten year old faced the beast and its large, dripping teeth—her body the only obstacle between the creature and the cot holding her little brother—the only thing she could imagine were two words scrawled in the sand where death’s boat would have been.
Not yet.