This is not a story about the life of Quinn Sutherland and Fern Whitelaw.
True, they were both born in the same small town by the sea within a year of each other. Fern was the daughter of the eccentric professor who lived in the mansion by the cliffs and who drove a hearse; Quinn the son of a fisherman who lived in a tiny shack that continuously smelled of seaweed and low-tide. They grew up in the usual way, made friends, went to school, learned arithmetic and geography and read Herman Melville's Moby Dick.
It is also true that they became friends in their final year of secondary school and grew as fond of each other as was possible. They left the small town by the sea together to go off on an adventure around the world - to explore, to learn, to understand. "To escape, to fly away," as Fern had said with a laugh and a flap of her arms.
To many their past is a strange blur that is filled with laughter, tears, quests, maps-with-X-marks-the-spot, cities at dawn with cups of hot coffee, marzipan strawberries and the eiffel tower at three AM. But anyone who ever knew Quinn Sutherland and Fern Whitelaw always said the same thing about them: The birds, they'd say, I remember the birds.
You see, at the root of the story of Quinn Sutherland and Fern Whitelaw are the birds. The birds that made them meet, the birds that caused them to become friends, the birds that helped them escape from their town. It all comes back to the birds.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Like I said, this is not a story about the life of Quinn Sutherland and Fern Whitelaw. It is a story about their death.