Re-post from my bibliography of 2007. Revised and updated for your pleasure. I own nothing but a vague sense of dejavu...

Forces of Nature

Prologue

The woman gazed out to the cerulean ocean, alone on the sand. A bloom of salt crystals glistened on her skin of her arms; she was beginning to burn in the midday sun, but she didn't care.

How had everything gone so horribly wrong?

The thought prickled in her mind like an unwelcome visitor, and she looked up to see what she thought was someone in a khaki uniform coming towards her along the beach.

He would never give up on her. Was it really him, or did she see only what she wanted to see?

She tried to call out to him but no sound was formed in her parched throat.

What if he passed by without seeing her? What if this awful place had reduced her to a wraith, never to be part of the human race again?

"Ben - " she rasped, but again, it was only audible in her head, "don't go - "

He was fading from view over the prow of the beach, so she scrambled and clawed her way up the dune and back into his line of sight, but the sand was her enemy and it gave way beneath her knees, her hands digging into powder too unstable to grab onto. She was sliding, sliding back down to the water's edge.

Her limbs were useless, her mind foggy. He would never know she was there.

Ben. Don't go.