Managing herself to an island, Emma was relived.

But her relief turned sour once the island — at first glance seemingly ordinary in every respect — turned to sand and dissolved under her feet.

What the fuck?! Emma cursed.

Again, in the water, Emma swam and tried to find another alcove to rest her weary body. But she was in the ocean and clearly not in the right state of mind; how could she be well in the noggin when she had… she didn’t even know how to describe what had just happened. She thought she had found an island and then it went up in smoke. She was delirious, perhaps, or exhausted. Starving?

But before Emma could ruminate on the ramifications of her perception of reality in a traumatized state, something bumped into her. Rudely, as well, she might add.

Snapping around — sloshing a bunch of water in an un-lady like way, not that she cared — she saw an island.

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Trickery or my own degradation? Emma thought.

As tempting as it was to blame herself, Emma knew that all was not well with the world. She might have been thrust into a terrible situation, yes, but that did not negate the fact that she had been on a boat — the USS Uncharted Waters — and it had been sunk by a god.

A god!

It was now coming back to her… yes, a god had done this. That Olympian she had just cursed for sinking the ship. Why did her memory only return now? Trauma?

Emma remembered leaving the banquet hall and running for her life. The alarms, yes, and then the people shoving and fighting each other. Emma had slipped through the entangled mass of crying people. She careened down one of the ship’s many passageways. She didn’t know where she was going, but she had to get somewhere, probably the lifeboats, if she ventured a guess. But an explosion rocked the ship and…

But the memory was gone. Whatever. Emma had important survival work to do.

Climbing onto the tiny island, it was nothing. Just a patch of land hardly bigger than a large puddle. The Science part of Emma wondered how such small islands could form. But then she abandoned the idea — she did not truly care, after all. But using the island to her advantage, Emma tried to search her surroundings. But it was pointless.

Water. Just water. And the dead.

And then the island vanished.

Emma plopped back into the water.

Mary. Mother. Of. Fu—