ONCE UPON THE PACIFIC
(A journey through the forgotten tides)
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Prologue
There are places the sea does not forget. Even when the world does.
The Pacific moaned like an old spirit that night — low and endless — as if it were trying to say something, but forgot the words halfway through. Somewhere beyond the horizon, clouds tangled with the moonlight, and the waves shimmered with secrets only the lost could hear.
Milo Carver sat alone on the worn deck of his boat, staring into the black. No stars. No shore. Just ocean, and the silence that had followed him for years.
In his hands, he held it again — the journal.
The leather was cracked, salt-bitten, and faintly smelled of driftwood and smoke. On its first page, in jagged ink, were five words:
"The Forgotten Tides are real."
— S.D.
He hadn't believed it at first. Who would? A stretch of sea that bends memory? That distorts time and calls to the grieving? A sailor's tale — until the sightings, the voices, the dreams.
The dream.
She was always there. Eliora. Standing barefoot on a shore made of glass, looking out into the mist like she knew something was coming. Her hair danced in the wind, and when she turned, her eyes said everything her lips didn't:
"Let go… or find me."
Some nights, Milo thought he heard her voice in the waves. Other nights, it was in the rustle of pages. He could no longer tell what was real — or if real even mattered anymore.
The sea didn't answer. But it never truly did.
He rose slowly, wind gnawing at his coat, and looked toward the thick curtain of fog that had begun to roll in from the east. There, just beyond it, he swore he saw it again — the shadow of an island that wasn't on any map.
A place where time forgets its name.
A place where she might be waiting.
A place where the tides remember everything.
He clutched the journal tighter, heart pounding like a drum long buried.
"Once more," he whispered into the dark, "I'll follow you, Eliora."
And the sea whispered back.
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Chapter One
The Edge of Maps
There was something about the harbor at dawn that felt like a secret the world hadn't quite decided to keep.
Milo Carver stood at the edge of the wooden dock, coffee in one hand, journal in the other, and a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. His boat — The Eliora — bobbed gently against the tide, her paint chipped, her mast weathered, but her soul still intact. He hadn't sailed her in almost three years.
Not since the day everything stopped.
"Still think I'm crazy?" he muttered under his breath, half to himself, half to the sea.
A gull screeched overhead in reply. He smirked.
In the distance, the fishing boats were already leaving — men with nets, boots, radios buzzing with weather updates. Normal lives. Grounded lives.
Milo didn't have that anymore.
He opened the journal again, flipping to the page he'd marked last night — the one that changed everything.
> "Latitude unknown. Stars vanish near the 18th wave. There's a glow beneath the water — don't trust it. But if she calls, listen."
He didn't know who S.D. really was. The handwriting was frantic, uneven, sometimes fading into sketches of coastlines that didn't exist. But it was enough. Enough to spark something restless in him — that whisper of maybe, just maybe…
Eliora wasn't entirely gone.
As he stepped onto the boat, the dock creaked like an old man warning him to turn back. Milo didn't listen. He never did. Not when his heart was louder than the world.
The harbor slipped behind as The Eliora eased out onto open water, her sails catching the soft morning breeze. Milo's fingers danced over the compass, then paused. It spun gently, directionless.
"Huh," he breathed, amused. "We haven't even started and you're already confused."
But beneath his sarcasm was something heavier. Fear. Wonder. That eerie feeling when the world begins to fold at its edges, like a map that's hiding something on the other side.
Somewhere out there — beyond coordinates and reason — was a place called the Forgotten Tides.
And whether it was madness, grief, or fate guiding him…
Milo had already crossed the point of no return.
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To be continued...