You feel a rumble.
Slowly, you take a deep breath, and the smell of brine fills your lungs. You moan as you exhale, shifting positions in your bed. The air feels especially chilly today.
Your ears twitch; you can hear footsteps going back and forth, smothered by the distance.
Suddenly, you feel another rumble. Ten times as strong as the first, it wakes you up violently, and causes you to sit up on your bed… or the sad excuse of what a bed should be.
You look around you, dazed and confused; just the same old brown, wooden walls.
You yawn. Again, the salty taste of the air startles you, but you're used to it. You turn your attention to the wall behind you, and notice a series of vertical dashes. Grabbing a knife next to you, you carve another dash to the wall.
Today marks 678 Sun-ups.
You lie back down noticing from a window that the Sun hasn't come up yet; weird, considering that at your age you tend to not wake up until noon.
The footsteps coming from outside your door won't cease, on the contrary, they only seem to increase, and soon enough they begin to sound more like stomps than anything. However, this doesn't bother you.
One more peek through your window, however, does.
You see a white bird with blue stripes flying…
LAND! You realize as your body automatically jolts up, and you rush past your door, fighting your way through a crowded hall towards the stairs that will lead you up to the deck.
"We've reached ZION!!!" You hear people scream as they hug each other, the feeling of ecstatic happiness fills the air. Smaller children look at the beach ahead of them confused; but you remember.
It made your life a living hell, but you would never forget it, the sight, the smell, the feel, or the taste of… land.
You remember it all too well; the tan color of the beach in the distance reminds you of its softness, its warmth. The gentle whispering of the tide reminds you of summer days at the beach, and the chirp of seagulls only makes the last minutes at sea unbearable.
Your happiness; your excitement, the ecstasy… it makes you overlook the shipwrecks along the beach, well, the signs that they weren't necessarily accidents, that is…
*****
As your ship, or better yet, ark approaches the beach; you notice a small group of people approach the coast armed to the teeth with stone weapons, such as javelins, spears, and knives.
The man leading the group appears especially hostile. He looks old, but is burly, and bears several face tattoos and plenty of scars, which are already visible from the ark. However a quick upward motion of his arm, with outstretched fingers confirms him to be an ally.
We're safe…
*****
As soon as you reach the beach, you're rushed away to the village; no time to explain and hurry up, that's all you know, nonetheless, you're just happy to be on land.
