The Island

The island taught its inhabitants that it was not always friendly. Wind whistled through the rotting wooden window frames and reminded them that their island paradise was not all it seemed.

Escaping their miserable city existence, the young childless falling apart couple had sold everything they owned and run away to this tropical paradise only three moths before. A summer of sun, surf, sand and meditation had given way to an autumn of gales, torrential unpredictable rain and arguments over whose turn it was to lock the door at night. A spate of break ins along the row of beach houses in the previous month had made everyone in this friendly open ex-pat community a lot warier and a lot less smiley.

Now the tourists were going home, the work was becoming scarce and the young couple’s seams were slowly but methodically becoming unpicked. Where they were once entwined by love, by a promise of a shiny happy future, they were now entwined by fear and held together by only their rotting windowed shack.

The girl hatched a plan one cool clear evening. She was going to become disentwined. She didn’t want lonely, windy, rainy beach life anymore than she had wanted miserable city existence. She packed up her things and crept out into the comforting dark of the night. Unbeknownst to her, her man was hatching a very same plan. He too was packing and creeping only his dark was a little bit scary. As the two crept their separate ways towards the same boat each caught a glimpse of someone moving nearby. A glimmer of hope in each heart confirmed to them that somewhere along the way they had stopped falling apart and were now very much falling together.