Cristelle Comby - Alone Together

It took him some time to focus on me. He was tired, but he fought to keep his eyelids open long enough to meet my gaze. I poured my thoughts into a silent message: “I don’t want to go.”

Killian blinked back at me once, twice and then his eyes closed again. My declaration had been left unanswered.

But his hand stayed in mine. His fingers around my fingers. A trickle of warmth, swimming amidst a sea of cold. Alive and not alone.

And in the pale morning sky, white birds flew towards the rising sun.

I felt it when Killian lost his fight against consciousness. His cold fingers stopped trembling, went limp in mine.

“No, no, no, you don’t,” I moaned, gathering what little strength I had left to get to my knees. The ship lurched to the side, waves leaping onboard to my right. I steadied my movements, favouring caution over urgency.

I moved slowly, calculating my movements as I shifted closer to Killian’s head, the deck remaining level. Though I shook him hard, it had no effect. The skin beneath my fingers was cold to the touch, shaken by the weakest of tremors now. Much like mine, his body had given everything it had. The small cloud I could see forming with every one of his exhales told me he was breathing, but the parted lips that let the air out were tinged with blue. No, not even tinged… they were blue. Blue to the point of indigo. That worried me.

I had nothing left to warm him up. I had packed a few blankets and spare clothes, but they went over the side with the suitcase we’d lost. I gathered him in my lap. I didn’t have much body warmth to share, but I would gladly give him everything I had left.

My heart sank as he let himself be manhandled without protest. Had he been conscious, he would never have accepted such proximity and the display of weakness that it betrayed. He probably would have made dire a comment in that low voice of his. And his eyebrows would have crossed as if they were one, signalling his displeasure for everyone to see.

But as I gathered him in my arms, Killian did none of those things. He was cold and unmoving. Dying, now that we were closer to safety than we’d been in weeks.

I rubbed my hands along his arms, generating heat and friction, showing him how he was never alone, telling him to fight on just a bit more. Just a little while longer. I held onto him, praying to every God I knew, pleading with the universe itself for my friend to live long enough so someone could find us. It could have all been so simple, and yet here we were… all so difficult.

Above us, the birds had gathered in a circle. In this vast desert of an ocean, we’d captured their attention. I could guess at what they saw: two survivors on the road to salvation, or two lost souls tricking themselves into thinking they had a chance. What was it we were holding onto, hope or despair?

I had half a mind to ask them out loud when something else caught my attention. Far away on the horizon, wisps of mist parted, revealing the outline of something big and dark. I tightened my hold on to Killian as the breath caught in my throat. It was a cliff… A huge, beautiful, blessed cliff!

“Hold on,” I told him, as a smile broke free on my face. “You hear me, you stupid old man, hold on.”

I moved out from underneath him and shook off my coat. The cold bit hard into me as I placed it over Killian’s limp form. Once I got to the centre of the boat, I reached for the oars.

Five minutes later, I couldn’t feel the cold anymore. I was on fire, my arms and back burning from the strain. Every freezing breath I took fed the flames growing in my lungs. But that glorious cliff was getting bigger and bigger.

Whatever we’d reached was no small island. I couldn’t see the end of it on either side. Maybe we’d hit terra firma at long last. God, how I hoped—how I prayed—we did.

Waves started pulling us in the right direction, making it easier to row. Our tiny embarkation gained speed. I could see a small cove ahead of us, what looked like a small rocky beach in the centre. I aimed for it as best I could. Now was not the time to crash into a rock formation.

As I kept rowing, elated by the proximity of salvation, my eyes settled on an even better sight. There were people atop that cliff. Mere pinpoints on the horizon at first, but they grew bigger as we got closer—a couple holding hands. A man with long brown hair beating in the winds, a beard that seemed longer than his hair. By his side, a woman with dark hair, held together by a colourful bandanna.

Out of strength, frozen to the bone, tired beyond words, I reached a hand to the sky and waved at them.

Exhausted, I collapsed onto the deck. The oars slipped out of my hands and into the ocean. Killian was passed out a few centimetres from me. I turned to face him with a smile.

“They waved back,” I told him, right before the world went black.

I watched with a smile as a familiar silhouette became visible on the horizon. I would know that gangly stick of a shape anywhere. Though he’d kept some of the muscle he gained on the island, Killian was as lanky and thin as ever.

The sun was rising behind him, a fiery ball of orange and red above the quiet ocean waves. Killian was almost out of the surf, walking out of the water and onto the beige sand. He wore nothing but grey swimming trunks, the colour matching the wet hair he was combing his hand through. He wore it longer these days, the curls I always suspected existed starting to show.

Leaning back down in my chair, I closed my eyes, basking in the warm glow of what was shaping out to be another day in paradise. There was a light breeze in the air, carrying with it the sweet fragrance of the plumerias that grew nearby.

Almost a year and a half had passed since the crash of Flight SWA 1528, somewhere in the Arctic Circle. It’d been almost fourteen months since we officially came back to life and reclaimed our lives, coming ashore on one of the Lofoten Islands in Northern Norway.

That lovely couple who helped us back on land brought us to a local hospital next. There, one of the nurses called the police. Less than a week later, Killian and I went our separate ways, each one of us boarding a different plane to head back to our homes, to our loved ones. Well… one of us did. It hadn’t taken me long to discover that Killian didn’t have much of anyone to go back home to.

Aside from a first-class flight to the motherland—that we’d been assured wouldn’t crash—the airline insurance company gave each of us a large check as “compensation for the emotional ordeal we went through, the result of this tragic, unforeseen and rare accident”, as their lawyer put it. A friend of my mother called it “bribe money” to make sure we wouldn’t sue them at a later date. I didn’t care either way. I counted the zeroes and nodded my thanks. It was more money than I could ever dream of earning. More than if I’d won the national Swiss lottery, in fact.

A large cheque wasn’t the only thing our trip north earned us. It got us the fifteen minutes of fame that neither of us wanted. The “Arctic Circle Survivors” as the media dubbed us, were all over the news for weeks. The media got their hands on a professional picture of Killian. In it, he stood tall and proud, wearing a light grey designer suit, thick eyebrows frowning at the camera over steely blue eyes. His hair was neatly combed back to add gravitas to the pose.

For me, they went with a picture they harvested off the internet, one I remembered being taken on a warm sunny day where I was wearing a short-sleeved lilac shirt and an old pair of blue jeans that had been cut above the knees. I’d been out all afternoon, helping out in the vineyards. My dad had captured the moment with his smartphone, calling out to me first and then snapping the picture when I turned back to look at him. I had my hair up in a ponytail, an easy-going smile on my face. Somehow it had ended up on the family winery’s website.