"Come on" I said gruffly to my little five year old sister. She'd bent down to pick up some shiny, purple pebbles.
"Yup," she smiled, showing the gaps in her milky teeth.
It was a cold, wet spring on the shingly beach. If I wasn't with Rosie, I'd be quicker, and hopefully drier. The rain seeped into my thin shirt, making my skin shiver with cold. Rosie still squatted, as she picked up purple, green and black pebbles.
"Look, Finnick," she said, holding up a particularly jagged orange stone, "Pretty!"
She stuffed it into her pocket of her coat, which father had forced her to wear.
The rain had now turned my bronze locks into a dark brown, and it was sticking irritably to my forehead.
"Come on, Rosie!" I persisted, holding her hand and dragging her across the beach.
"Ow, Finnick! That hurts!" she yelped, but I didn't care. She scowled at me, her little tongue sticking out.
I let go of her hand, "Look," I snapped, "We came here to get samphire or mussels, because you won't eat fish. Do you want supper?"
"Don't care!" she said stubbornly, "Staying here!"
She flopped down onto the beach, and I marched off towards the end of the beach, where the rock pools were.
I knelt down near the nearest one, trying to spy some mussels. It was hard to see, the rain was hitting the rock pool with such force and rings of expanding water dappled the surface, blurring everything. I finally decided to scrape some cockles off a near by slap of rock. Why didn't Rosie eat fish like the rest of our family? It would be so much easier; no one would have to do this in the rain.
Previously the waves had been merely hitting the shore, now they bashed against the shore, as if they were great enemies. Suddenly, a mewling noise broke my train of thought. I looked behind me to see if it was my sister, but no, she was creating piles of stones, giggling to herself.
"Hello?" I called uncertainly, "Anybody there?"
Another mewling noise followed, harsher than before. It definitely came from that cave, the one that was already half filled with water. It could be a seal pup, I thought, but if it was human, if it was human, it wouldn't have long left. I rushed towards the cave, the water weighing down my khakis.
"Hello?" I shouted over the torrential noise of the waves.
"In here!" screamed someone, a girl, I thought. I waded until the water reached my chest and then I started swimming to the cave, luckily, I was the fastest swimmer in my year. I swam into the cave, bobbing on the surface.
"Where are you?" I gasped
"Here," she whispered. Her face was parallel to the cave's ceiling, water lapping at her chin. She was far back, at the smallest point of the cave. I kept on swimming, and when I was close enough I hooked my arms around her waist and swam as fast as I could carrying her.
As soon as my feet touched the comforting ocean floor, I half dragged half carried her back to the shore. I collapsed on the beach, my feet still in the water, with the girl in my lap and my sister gawking at me. I slowly sat up, shivering from the cold, wondering why the girl was in the cave in the first place. Introductions first, I told myself.
"Hey, are you ok? My name's Finnick. What's yours?" I asked the girl
She turned around to face me. Her hair was plastered to her scalp, and it was too wet to determine the colour. Her skin was icy pale, with Goosebumps all over it, and she was silently shivering. The most eye catching thing about this girl was her eyes, deep green with specks of blue, like the sea.
"Annie," the girl slowly said, "Annie Cresta."