I had seen many of these days, and just as many nights. Heard the same doubts and questions again and again. I felt tired, desperately hungry, and was a great distance away from that sandy beach. Far away from the cottage and its rustic beauty. Ever further away from the city I once loved, the life I once lived. At one point I thought I must have done it myself, all the effort I have put in, muscles in my body working incessantly, the threats of nature that pushed through. I thought, 'how else could I get this far?'
Onward I hauled, fighting with the waves, attempting to ignore my fear of the creatures. Onward I moved further into the sea, away from what I used to be, to discover where this chain has chosen it's ending. Until the day when the sun broke over the horizon and shone its light on things my eyes had not seen before. In the distance in front of me I could see a faint blob of land, as I drew closer I could see mountain peaks and tall trees. I still had many days travel, but I could see the end. I could see where this chain was taking me. So I pushed forward using every ounce of strength left in my battered and bruised body. As I drew closer to my destination, the water, the wind, they both grew warmer. The nights weren't quite so cold, and not quite so lonely.

I didn't fully realize how very tired my legs were until the moment I found solid ground beneath my feet. And as I stumbled closer to the shore, I could see my skin had become pasty, no, translucent white and wrinkled. Any fat that had resided on my body when I ventured into the ocean had disappeared; I was thin and gauntly. The incessant hunger in my body was eating me from the inside out. My hands, once soft and smooth, were now wrinkled like the rest of my body but red from the layers of skin that had been rubbed raw. Another thing I had noticed, for which the pain would not let me forget, was all of the gouging wounds that covered my body. Those creatures had tried to make a meal out of me before I gave them a taste of my foot. My body resembled that of a corpse, mangled by who knows what, and floating in the sea for who knows how long. As strange as it was to see my body in this state, what happened next was even stranger. As I stepped onto the shore, as I left the sea, my body began to restore itself. The colour returned to a healthy pink colour, the wounds miraculously healed, my tired limbs rediscovered their strength, and the hunger subsided.

So this brings me to the chains end. As I stand here, on the glittering pure white sand, I realized that I had lost the chain. I turned around and sure enough, it lay there, its worn, rusted and slimy links on shore, extending far into the clear turquoise sea. But it is no longer there for me; it is waiting for someone else. As I set out to explore this new place, the thought struck me, how odd that I was always looking for something of worth, a treasure that I could take home, but the treasure that I chose brought me home with it.