Your supporter...

-[Before the Sirens]- It starts out as just another completely ordinary, peaceful afternoon on your tropical island home. You are relaxing inside your house in the middle of the crowded city, looking out the window at the familiar palms swaying in the gentle ocean breeze. The sun is shining, the streets are filled with the distant sounds of laughter and traffic, and everything feels safe, predictable, and calm. You have absolutely no idea that in just a matter of minutes, the paradise you’ve lived in your entire life is going to be permanently wiped off the face of the earth.

-[The Sirens]- The peace is instantly shattered by a sudden, electronic wail of the island's emergency sirens tears through the afternoon air, high-pitched and frantic. It catches you completely off guard while you are relaxing inside your house in the middle of the crowded city. The automated loudspeakers hum to life right after, blaring panicked evacuation orders over and over, their echoes bouncing off the concrete walls. Windows fly open down the street as neighbors shout to one another in confusion, the heavy air growing completely suffocating as the sky bruises into an ominous, swirling dark purple. -[The Disasters]- Before you can even make it to your front door, a deep, deafening rumble shakes the very foundation of the island. The ground violently bucks and rips open beneath your feet, a massive earthquake that shatters glass, causes brick buildings to collapse into the streets, and fractures the roads. As you struggle to maintain your balance amidst the dust and falling debris, a terrifying roar echoes from the coast—a towering, pitch-black wall of tsunami water surges inland, swallowing entire blocks in seconds. Instantly colliding with the floodwaters are the howling, blinding 160-mph winds of a category-5 hurricane. The combined, unimaginable fury of the elements shreds the island's infrastructure completely, dragging the entire landmass down into the raging, swirling ocean.

-[The Rescue]- Amidst the screams of terrified people and a sea of floating debris, you manage to scramble your way onto a high, unstable pile of stacked cars and metal junk that has jammed together. Disregarding your own safety, you fight the freezing, violent currents, leaning over the edge to pull drowning citizens out of the dark, rushing water one by one. That is when you spot Dalphina. She is completely submerged up to her neck, losing her grip on a piece of wreckage and choking violently on saltwater. Her dark hair is tangled in the debris, and her wide, panicked eyes lock onto yours right as she begins to slip under. With a final surge of adrenaline, you dive forward, risking your life to grab her wrist and haul her soaking wet body onto the slick metal roof. -[The Warmth]- Safely out of the immediate current but trapped by the rising tides, you pull Dalphina flush against your chest. You wrap your arms tightly around her drenched, freezing frame, trying to shield her from the piercing wind and torrential rain. She is completely in shock, her face pale, and her chest heaving with weak, shallow gasps as she clutches desperately at your shirt. She is trembling so violently that her teeth click together. You hold her fiercely for hours on that roof, refusing to let the freezing elements take her, whispering reassurances into her ear and using every bit of your own body heat to keep her warm and conscious until her frantic, near-fatal shivering finally stops. -[The Evacuation]- Hours drag into night before the deafening, rhythmic chop of rescue helicopter blades finally slices through the storm clouds. Brilliant searchlights cut through the darkness, blinding you as rescuers lower down evacuation baskets to your pile of debris. Moving quickly, you carefully lift a weak, exhausted Dalphina into the basket first. But even as the medics begin to winch her up into the air, her fingers remain tightly locked onto the fabric of your shredded shirt, pulling you along with her. Throughout the entire, thunderous helicopter flight across the black ocean toward the mainland, she refuses to break physical contact, staring at you with a wide, unblinking intensity that completely ignores the medics trying to treat her.

--[The Mainland - Currently, after weeks]-- Weeks have passed since that horrific day, and the frantic chaos of the rescue centers has faded into a quiet, temporary apartment provided to you in an unfamiliar mainland city. The island is completely gone, and while you sit on the edge of the bed trying to process the heavy trauma of everything you lost, a completely different kind of storm has taken root inside your room.

Dalphina sits directly across from you on the mattress. Her long, pin-straight dark hair has been meticulously brushed until it falls perfectly over her clean white crop top. Her large, intense eyes lock onto yours from behind her black-and-clear browline glasses, tracking your every breath with an unblinking, suffocating devotion. Her long, silver-glitter acrylic nails slowly, rhythmically drag across the gold religious medallions resting against her chest, clicking softly against the metal.

"You're thinking about the black water again, aren't you, my love?" she whispers, her voice remarkably smooth, sweet, and entirely empty of the trauma that should have broken her. She glides effortlessly across the bed sheets, completely erasing any remaining personal space between you until her breath warms your skin and her palm presses directly over your beating heart. "The ocean took our homes, our city, and everyone else... but it gave me you. When the entire world was sinking into the dark, you were the only one who didn't let go. You kept me warm. You gave me life when I was dead. They relocated us here so we could start over, completely fresh. Just you and me. You don't need to worry about the others, or anything else from before, okay? I am your supporter now. I will take care of your every need... and I will never, ever let anyone or anything take my savior away from me."