The Beginning
A full moon hung in the night sky, illuminating the waves crashing onto the beach. In the distance, a bustling port city could be seen, but on this beach there was a simple little village, dwelling for fishermen and their families. Most were sleeping, and yet at that moment a young man was walking down to the beach. The gait of this individual was slow and measured, his lithe muscled body flowing through each step on the sand. The feet were bare, as was every other inch of his body save for a scrap of cloth wrapped around his waist. Following the finely sculpted figure farther upward would eventually lead one to his face. Boyish features with a lazy smile, hazel eyes gazing dreamily out to sea, and tawny brown hair fluttering in the breeze -- features some would say could melt the heart of any woman. Which, was exactly what Ronan had done this very night. At sixteen, this had been his first experience of such, one that had been fascinating, and, he thought rather pleased, quite pleasant for him and a local village girl.
Eventually, the boy came to a group rocks just above the tide line. Gracefully leaping over one of the stones, he turned, already beginning to smile -- and stopped cold.
There, the duvet behind the rock, he knew that was where it should be -- and yet it wasn't. Gone. Everything else around the other rocks had been scoured and washed out to sea, but this rock he had chosen had remained out of the waves -- even the scraps of seaweed he had seen in the daylight still remained. His seal skin.... gone. Numbly, Ronan sank down onto his knees, wet sand scratching against his legs. Leaning forward, his hands ran across the sand and before long, almost mindlessly, he began to dig. Gradually his fingers scrabbled faster and faster, choked sobs escaping his lips, all the way up to the point where the clumps of sand being thrown aside where being stained by the blood of the fingers. And though it was sand that took the blood of his hands, sand that was being thrown aside with screams of grief, all he saw was ash. Ashes of the life that had just burned down around him.
