I came into being with a large splash, and a gasp, and promptly started to sink. Then came the struggle, and the clawing my way to the surface of water that was surprisingly wet, and surprisingly real...and very, very salty. After that, came the fear.

I knew what lived in the ocean. I knew what the lore said about creatures that rose from the deeps in storm-tossed waves. I knew...

Why did every game begin this way? With the character ship-wrecked or washed ashore? Or coming to consciousness in a wilderness? Or in a cage in a cave full of goblins? Why couldn't we ever remember what came before? And why was there always a good reason we never had any gear?

I eyed the distant shoreline, and started to swim. At least, I hoped it was a shoreline. All I could see was a slightly darker blur in the distance. For all I knew it could be a leviathan, or a shipwreck, or a net set out to trap unwary swimmers, or any one of a number of horrible things. It was still the only thing I could define, and the waves were rolling in that direction.

Waves always rolled toward the shore, right?

Am I right?

Okay, I conceded a little while later. Maybe they didn't always roll toward the shore. Maybe they just kept rolling. Away from whatever had caused them. Away from the great disturbance that had set them in motion. It reminded me of a line from an old movie, except the ocean wasn't anyone's will, and the waves were as far a cry from a mind as I could imagine...and I could imagine a lot.

Like being in an ocean in a game world I hadn't met yet. And like being soaked to the skin and feeling the weight of my clothes trying to pull me beneath the ocean's surface, and like... Would I really drown, if I simply stopped swimming? And would that be enough to wake me up at wherever I'd really gone to sleep at?

Funny how I couldn't remember going to sleep.

Also funny how I didn't want to take the risk of not swimming.

The water was cold, too, and that thin, dark line was slowly getting thicker. I still didn't bother trying to get my feet down. When the bottom was near enough to touch with my frantically paddling hands, I'd know I could try standing up. At least, that was how I thought it might work.

What I couldn't work out was why I thought I was in a world other than my own, why I thought sleeping was a bad idea until I was out of the water...and why I had an unreasoning fear that something huge, and nameless, dogged every single stroke I made toward the shore. All I knew was I had an urgent need to keep swimming, and to swim faster if I could, and that that need grew stronger by the second.

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Did they even have seconds in this world?

I figured they must, that I'd either know about them, or watch the knowledge fade, as the days drew on. The water surged around me, pushing me in the same direction as the waves. And I looked back.

There was a shadow, a mountain sliding in my wake, the shine of water-soaked skin shuddering emerald and sapphire slicing after me. Ripples flowed in front of it, pushing me along with the waves. I gulped, and almost froze. For a second, I stopped swimming, and then terror kicked in and I turned into the back of my current wave and began swimming for all I was worth.

It was hard to ignore the idea that I should just give up, that whatever was coming, the front of it was surely underneath me by now, that it didn't matter how far or how fast I swam, I was already got, eaten, swallowed alive, all the options I didn't want to have in a newly started game. Or existence. Or whatever this was.

I was sobbing when my fingertips scraped through sand at the bottom of a down-stroke, but I took heart, and plunged forward, dropping my legs until my knees and feet hit bottom, too. I dug my toes into the sandy surface, pushing to my feet and stumbling forward through the waves. The dark smudge I'd seen after landing had definitely been a shoreline.

Now, sand slid beneath my feet, and a chill wind pulled at the clinging fragments of my waterlogged clothes, and I had time to wonder why I was in a long, singlet-top that barely covered the shortest of shorts. I also wondered what I'd done with my shoes.

I made it out of the waves, then past the last rippling lines of water advancing and retreating down the sand, and still I didn't stop moving. Nor did I look back. I didn't want to see that giant green-and-blue-monolith rising from the sea on foreshortened limbs to come after me. I didn't want--

A roar tumbled into the air, mingling with the rumble of thunder overhead, and the roar of the waves. I drew a sharp breath, flinging myself forward and rolling, as if that was going to save me from whatever came next. A distant splash reached me over the sound of the waves, and I scrambled back to my feet, pushing myself into a rubbery-legged run as the beach steepened into dunes.

The water caught me behind the knees, and I stumbled, keeping my feet by sheer force of will as I pushed forward, and the wave rushed past, then started rolling back. I almost lost my footing, then, and thanked whatever powers ruled this world that I stayed upright and moving against the pull of the water. My thanks died to cussery as I walked into a rising wall of rock, but I didn't stop.

I didn't try to climb the rock, either, but followed the rising ground parallel to it, and prayed the beast couldn't send a wall of water to pluck me from it.

A moaning grumble reached my ears, and I curled my fingers into a cleft in the rock, and dared to look seaward.

The monster didn't look so big from up here, but I was still relieved to see it had no legs, no way to propel itself through the surf and onto the beach to pursue me, and even more relieved to see it turn its massive bulk out to sea and slowly slide away.

Which left me with other, more worrying, possibilities to consider. Things like who was I, and why did I feel like I'd come to a different world to the one in which I was meant to be?