The yacht boat glided back toward the shore, cutting through the dark water like a knife through silk. The engine hummed low beneath them, a steady vibration that traveled up through the deck and into her bones, and the wake spread out behind them in a wide V, white foam glowing faintly in the moonlight. The water was black, impossibly black, the kind of black that seemed to swallow light itself, and every few seconds a wave would catch the reflection of a star and shimmer for just a moment before disappearing back into darkness. 

The lights of Goa glittered in the distance, a string of diamonds along the coast, warm and golden and impossibly far away. They looked like another world, a world she had once belonged to, a world that was slowly receding from her grasp.