Riptide - An Outer Banks Fanfiction

Chapter 26

'Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.'

- When Great Trees Fall by Maya  Angelou

. . .

Riptide's first encounter with death happened when she was only nine years old.

She was at a surfing competition and after winning her heat, she and her dad had decided to stick around to watch some of the senior heats. The surf was particularly choppy that day. A storm was brewing off the coast and the waves came in hard and fast. Rip's heat hadn't been too bad, starting early in the day but as the competition wore on, the winds picked up and the waves started getting bigger and meaner.

A surfer had gone out spying the wave he wanted to take and he set himself up and things were going well for him. But when he took his second wave, he wasn't quick enough in getting to his feet and the wave wiped him out.

He ended up getting hit in the head by his board and ended up drowning because he fell unconscious.

Deaths didn't happen all that often in surfing. They were rare but they still happened. That day was the day that solidified Rip's sense of respect for the ocean. Granted her father had always drilled it in to her but it had only ever really hit home that day.

The next encounter she had with death happened three years later and was a lot more personal. It didn't happen on a beach in front of thousands of people, where there were lifeguards able to take over. That encounter with death happened in her own home and the only person around for a good mile or two was Rip.

She had never actually been in a hospital when she was delivered the news of death.

And for all the professionals, whom had become close friends with death, whom defied him on a regular basis, none of them were able to save her little brother.

Through all of her tears, Gloria had told her what had happened.

How Finn had wanted to get a glass of water in the middle of the night and had ended up falling down the stairs. How Noah had heard the commotion and found his twin sprawled at the bottom of the stairs, his limbs at odd angles and a pool of blood slowly reaching out from a head wound. How Noah woken Gloria up and in a panic the woman had rung an ambulance. Finn was pronounced dead at the scene.

Rip had honed in on every sound that was coming out of Gloria's mouth as she told her that there was a reason as to why he'd fallen down the stairs. He'd had a brain tumour, which was sat in such a place that affected his balance and made his body more friable.