Season: Autumn
Weather: Overcast with soft wind. Dead leaves drift slowly to the ground. Spinning
Day of the week: Thursday
Date: 4th April, 2024
It's nice to work and be distracted from my increasingly dark thoughts lately. However, people seem to be tiptoing around me for some reason. I'm not sure. Apparently, I look pale and unwell and that I should be at home.
I haven't been as on the ball as usual and am perhaps working a little slower than usual but I haven't made any mistakes. At least, I don't think so.
After everyone got back from lunch, my team leader and Deaglan came to stop me. They took me out for lunch and then Deaglan gently took me by the hand and insisted I go back home with him, saying we'd been given an early day off.
I'm fine. There's nothing wrong with me. Just let me work.
When I got home, I opened my laptop and got back to work. The moment my team leader realised I was still working, he told me to go away and rest. The team would be fine without me. In the next moment, Deaglan was knocking on my room door and then closing my laptop.
"Let's go to the beach," he suggested.
I didn't want to go but he bundled me up and took my hand. He drove us to a distant beach where few people went, putting out a beach towel for us to sit on under the shade of a big umbrella. He left me sitting and fuming while he went to buy us food for a picnic.
When he came back, I had fallen asleep and woke up to him picking baby crabs off me. Since there seemed to be quite the swarm of little crabs rushing away from the sea at that moment, we hurriedly packed up to return to the car.
Looking back out at the sea, it looked like the tide was going out, but I couldn't see any other reason as to why the baby crabs might be swarming. It looked like something from a movie.
Deaglan drove us away inland, into the mountains where we found quiet lookout halfway up the mountain. It was then that both our mobile phones rang with alarms for all coastal areas to evacuate immediately. There had been an earthquake out at sea and there was going to be a tsunami. As the earthquake hadn't been that big, they didn't expect the tsunami to be too big either, but there would probably be damage to our part of the coast. Most of the city was being evacuated as well.
Exchanging glances, Deaglan and I stayed on the lookout and saw the rising tsunami wave in the distance, travelling in our direction. Before long, there were a few other cars and worried people who had come to join us. Some had brought camping gear, making use of the toilet facilities. The ensuing floods shouldn't reach this far inland, but we would have a first rate view.
The sun set and the coppery light made the huge growing wave out at sea look all the more threatening. Much of the coastal seabed had been exposed. The streetlights below were blinking on when there was a loud crashing roar and a trembling of the earth beneath our feet. Or that was how it seemed. Whether the earth actually shook or not, I wasn't sure. With a chill in our hearts, we watched many of the lights below that had just turned on go out.
Lying in the car and writing in my journal by the external light of the toilet block, I couldn't help shivering. Deaglan and I were leaning together, each feeling the other person's trembling.
Then I received a message from Bezel.
"I heard there was a tsunami over where you are. Are you dead yet? Please tell me you're dead."
Deaglan peeked at my phone and snatched it away, blacklisting Bezel's number and deleting the message. After deleting that message, he saw all the other cruel messages that Bezel periodically sends me and deleted all my messages from Bezel.
I could hear his heavy breathing.
"That's enough," he told me. "Stop straining your eyes and writing. Close your eyes and go to sleep, or if you're hungry, have something to eat."