Epilogue — Where the Ocean Keeps Its Promises
Island people don't measure life in years.
We measure it in tides.
In how many times the sea tried to take something from us—and whether we learned how to stand anyway.
On islands, you grow up knowing that beauty and danger share the same horizon. That the water that feeds you can also break you. That love is no different. You don't fear the waves—you learn when to bend, when to hold your breath, and when to let yourself be carried.
Lara learned that early.
On Réunion, the mountains rise sharp and sudden, as if the earth itself refused softness. The roads curve because nothing here believes in straight lines—not paths, not hearts. The wind carries salt and memory in equal measure, and every child grows up understanding that leaving doesn't mean escaping.
It only means stretching.
Jaden had always known it.
Island blood doesn't forget. It remembers in sunburn and calloused feet, in the way balance comes instinctively on shifting sand. Mauritian roots teach you that survival is layered—languages stacked on top of one another, cultures braided tight, joy learned alongside loss. We come from everywhere and nowhere at once, and somehow we endure.
They didn't survive because life was kind.
They survived because island people don't wait for calm to begin living.
They loved the way island people do—slowly at first. In pieces. Carefully. With hands still shaking from old storms. The kind of love that doesn't rush because it knows rushing leads to wreckage. The kind that listens. That stays.
On islands, we say the sea gives back what it takes.
Just never in the same form.
Loss became strength. Pain became patience. Fear became a compass.
They learned that healing doesn't look like forgetting. It looks like choosing joy anyway. Like laughing with salt still on your skin. Like trusting the water again, even after it dragged you under.
Island people believe this:
If the ocean didn't finish you, nothing will.
They didn't meet to save each other.
Island people know better than that.
They met to witness each other.
To say: I see your storms. I won't deny them. To choose joy without pretending the scars don't ache when the weather changes.
Tragedy doesn't ask permission on islands. It arrives like a cyclone warning—quiet, inevitable, devastating.
And still, people rebuild.
Because island love isn't loud.
It's steady.
It's cooking when your hands shake. It's staying when leaving would be easier. It's laughing even when grief sits at the table with you.
Somewhere between sunrise and tide change, Lara understood that freedom was never about leaving—it was about returning to herself.
And Jaden understood that home was never a place.
It was a person who stayed when the waves rose.
The ocean keeps its promises.
It takes. It teaches. And if you're brave enough to stay—
It gives you back more than you ever imagined.
Not because you asked.
But because you survived.
And sometimes, when the sea is quiet and the world finally exhales, you realize the truth island people have always known:
Love was never the plan.
It was the consequence.
...
"La mer i pran, mé li i rann ossi.Si ou kèr i tini, lamour i retrouv ou."
(The sea takes—but it gives back too.If your heart holds, love will find you.)
Lamour pa sauve twa. Li krwar dan twa kan twa krwar plis."
(Love doesn't save you. It believes in you when you no longer do.)