On one of the many days of my eighth year of life, I felt death upon me. More than upon, I felt it clinging onto me, hard nails digging into my back, piercing like the icicles that hung stiff from the roof, back at home in Canada. I felt death spinning and twisting my powerless body relentlessly.

It was night, and the moon was swollen and yellow in the low sky, making slits of pale light on the pool outside the wooden cottage our family was staying in. I’d asked my three year old sister Carlin not to play with my new teddy, but it was strangely inevitable that I continued to always find her playing with him. So I would lock myself in the bathroom with him, in hope of avoiding my toddling little sister. The toilet seat felt cool on my legs, allowing a short break from the heat. I thought of home in those moment, wondering if the usual two metres of snow was layering the ground. I thought of how Carlin would eat the snow, gathering plentiful scoops with her palms and then fitting it all in her mouth. I sighed as I looked out the window, suddenly homesick. But a loud rumble moving through the ground quickly interrupted my thoughts. My toes curled at the vibrations. Outside the palm trees fell, one by one. The moon hid behind a cloud in fear. A thick wall of foamy white water heaped towards my little cottage. Everything then happened too quickly for my senses to follow. Impact is a hazy memory, I don’t remember much. But I do remember the strangely dazzling beauty, as my only breath escaped in thick silver bubbles in the black water.