We assumed it was ocean and ice all the way but when the ship got caught in an immense current we found ourselves washed ashore. The younger ones haven't set foot on land their whole lives and were the first to leap overboard, landing on sea-worn legs that couldn't walk quite right on a surface that didn't fight back.
Two broken legs and a fractured ankle later, we managed to corral them all back onboard while we decided whether or not to tell them that they'd been walking over an island formed from bones. Sand has always been the bones of oceanic life - shells, scales and carapaces worn down to dust - but this island... this sand had empty eye sockets staring back at us and rib cages broken apart from the inside.
All the things we thought we'd left behind and now we've managed to find out what happened to everyone who decided to stay. Against our better judgement we started placing the faces of our lost loved ones over everything we saw, creating a graveyard of our past instead of plotting our escape back to deeper waters.
When we eventually tried to leave we soon realised just how trapped we'd become as the tides began to rise and our ship did not. Something was caught on the hull, or maybe something had caught our hull and was grasping it in the same sun-bleached white bones we saw outside every porthole.
Acting on impulse we loaded up everyone and everything we could, setting sail in lifeboats barely designed to last a few hours in mild waters while the ship we'd called home groaned and ruptured before sinking into the sand. Another skeleton for their collection.
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