Stone & Adora
At the witching hour on a cool winter night in November of 2013, Adora Sullivan slipped out of her bed under a full Frost Moon. Outside her window, brisk ocean winds hissed and howled across the deserted shoreline. This breeze took the weathered gate, a creak and a clunk as it swayed, opening and slamming closed against the lock. But this wasn’t what had woken her. More often than not, an intense sense of longing happened to consume her at this hour. Whether during awake or sleepwalked, she always found herself aching to be beside the ocean.
She coveted her sea as much as she needed to breathe.
At the same time Adora’s eyes had opened, miles away, across the Atlantic, beneath an isle called Bone Island, Stone Danvers took another monotonous breath. From a sepulchral tomb at the bottom of the sea, he could do nothing but stare up at the full moon threading through midnight waters, waiting for Death to take him once again.
The sand was ice cold beneath Adora’s feet as she slipped out into the night. Each step to the rhythm of Stone’s helpless, beating heart, the two bound together by nocturnal torment with an ocean between them.
Adora closed her eyes, remembering when she was a six-year-old child. She tried to make it to Bone Island, but it had become a struggle to keep her head above water. Adora’s mother had swum after her, trying to get to her in time. “Adora!” her mother had screamed, and at the time, Adora didn’t know why she was determined to swim all that way. But every time she closed her eyes, she remembered how the saltwater tasted sliding down her throat and the burn in her eyes each time she splashed for something to hold on to.
And at the same time, Stone closed his eyes, remembering the drawings in his sketchpad as the burn in his lungs returned. He’d died more than a hundred times,—an ache now was just an ache. But each time, he still remembered what it felt like with the drawing tool between his fingers. He could feel his palm sliding across the paper, sketching comforting eyes to give him something to hold on to.
The night was quiet, the waves a gentle woosh as Adora walked across the shore, the beam from the lighthouse drifting across her silk nightgown every seven seconds. Once she reached the cave, she lay on the sand on her side at the waterline. Every slight breeze chilled her skin as she pressed her ear against the earth. She believed that if one listened closely, the almost-muted sound coming from the ocean was like a soft heartbeat.
It wasn’t but a slow beat, ebbing and flowing, fading and returning.
The desperate sound bore a hole in her soul, and she reached out, laying her palm against the sand, splaying her fingers.
The tide crawled up the shore, taking her hand.
And this time, inside the coffin at the bottom of the sea, a single tear slid down Stone’s cheek, feeling peace in death. Then once again, he took his final breath.