Eye of the Storm

Chapter 8

Lorenzo, Leo, Isla and I pick up Ethan’s body, being ever so careful. All of us hold back tears, a hard task as Amy sings softly, a sad hymn for an official send of. As the sun falls below the horizon, we walk into the water until our knees are submerged.
“Ready?” Lorenzo asks. I nod. We slowly lower Ethan’s body into the salty waves, giving him a gentle push into the unknown abyss of the ocean.
“Goodbye…” everyone looks at me sympathetically. “I’ll miss you buddy,” my throat tightens as I say those last words. As his pale, lifeless body floats off into the horizon everything hits and my heart tears. Ethan Porelli, best friend since birth. “Rest in peace,”
No one jokes, no one sings, no one even speaks. People dying on islands that have been deserted isn’t unheard of, but like this is just horrible. I know it’s my fault but no one else will let me believe it, blaming it on his own way of dealing with his emotions. Emotions that wouldn’t be there unless I had placed them. It’s true in some respect that Ethan isn’t very good at dealing with his feelings, he never has been. He was very sensitive, too. So no one dared cross him. No one except Leo, a man with somehow even more complicated feelings than Ethan. If I’m honest I’m not sure how to feel about Leo. My feelings for him are obvious but I’m not sure what to think about him, since what happened with Ethan is not only my fault, but his too.

After a long and tedious process, we managed to make a ‘fire’ of sorts, making sure to feed it small sticks and dry leaves constantly, fearing it may vanish. The days here are warm and humid, but once night sets in, things like hypothermia become an issue that we don’t want to face. We all sit around the fire, staring at the flames aimlessly, watching the soak through the wood, absorbing every last bit. Isla stands up.
“Ethan was a great guy,” she says, grabbing a stick and setting the top alight, holding it up like a torch. She looks at us. “For Ethan,” she says, raising it to the sky, as well as my heart. I reach down and grab a stick, doing the same.
“For Ethan,” I exclaim, standing next to Isla. She smiles at me, with a gaze warmer than the fire. Lorenzo, Dan and Emerald rise, doing the same. Eventually everyone is on their feet, sticks in hand with the fire burning into the night sky.
“For Ethan,”

Hey hey what a short chapter oop.