"HERE!" she shouted, and her voice came out hoarse and not nearly loud enough to carry across the water, drowned almost immediately by the surf, so she tried again, louder, forcing volume past the rawness in her throat, feeling something tear somewhere inside that made her want to cough. "I'M HERE!"
She kept waving, kept shouting, her arms burning with the effort, her voice cracking like thin ice underfoot, her lungs heaving against the cold that wanted to steal her strength. "I'M HERE! I'M ALIVE!"
For a terrible moment, nothing happened.
The lights kept sweeping in their patterns. The boats kept moving. The voice kept calling, distant and desperate, and she could hear the way it was starting to break, starting to lose faith. Doubt crept in—cold and insidious, wrapping around her heart—that they couldn't see her, that she was too far, too dark, too small against the vastness of the coastline and the indifferent sea, that she was just another shadow among shadows.
