Hey, guys! I know it's been forever, but here it is! The beginning of my new-and-improved, rebooted version of my own story! It still features Alex as the main character and still has many of the same plot points that I've had in mind this entire time, only this time it's been worked out so that the kinks in the general plot that were bothering me are gone. I really hope you like it, and here's to more regular updates!
It was a hot summer's day when a sixteen-year-old Alexandra Moore and her friends went on an outing to the beach. They woke up early for the drive and brought a picnic lunch, towels, and some games to play along with their fully charged batteries for some music. When they arrived, they set up their towels and their games, ignoring all of them to strip down to their bathing suits and immediately run into the water. The beach was empty except for them, their own little paradise. Girls shrieked as they splashed each other, boys laughed at them and dunked each other underwater, couples played chicken and tried to knock each other down. When they tired of the water they moved to the shore, making grand sand castles and playing volleyball and baking in the sun, grateful for the warmth against their skin. Noon brought with it lunch and naps and stifled giggles as the waking buried their sleeping friends in the sand, soon followed by shrieks and games of chase as the sleeping woke, displeased to be made into sand castles. The afternoon promised music and dancing and quick, refreshing dips in the water to cool off before going at it again.
As the sun began to dip below the horizon and talk of packing up to leave began, Alex went for a lazy swim by herself. She felt at peace in the water, and at times she felt she might have been born there rather than in a boring old hospital like everyone else. With the sun beating down on her tanned, brown skin, her light brown eyes closed, almost napping, long, deep brown hair fanning out in a crown around her head, she didn't notice how far she'd drifted away until her friend's shout to come back startled her fully awake. She rolled over onto her stomach and began to swim back to her friends, but her usual steady progress was sluggish and faltering. It wasn't until she heard her friends' panicked screams that she looked back and understood why she wasn't going any faster: a whirlpool had appeared from nowhere, pulling at her toes and dragging her backwards, away from the safety of the shore. Alex swam harder, with every ounce of strength she had, but the water was stronger, pulling her backwards faster and faster. Panicked, she screamed for help, but by the time any of her friends could begin swimming to her rescue, she was in the whirlpool itself, being spun around and around, deeper and deeper as she screamed in fear, trying desperately to free herself from its grasp... And then it closed above her and she couldn't breathe as it dragged her down to the bottom of the ocean and she knew she would drown.
Her friends on the surface looked on in horror as their friend was dragged down to the dark depths of the ocean, away from them. Still in shock, they called emergency services, but there was nothing anyone could do. Alex was gone forever.
Alex didn't notice she was free from the whirlpool's grasp until her head breached the surface of the water. She gasped for air, filling her lungs with the life-giving sweetness, and coughed up mouthful after mouthful of water. She hardly had time to open her eyes and look around when a wave broke over her head, dumping the exhausted teenager onto some hot, sandy shore, where she managed to pull herself out of the waves' grasp, roll over onto her back, and look up to see palm trees and an unfamiliar shoreline. She didn't get much time to contemplate it, though, before her vision blurred and she fell unconscious to the strange new world she was in.
