24-year old Dana was very concerned. It had been nearly a week since her 63-year-old mother, Tricia, had disappeared after a trip to the beach with her friends. Worse still was that most people she brought it up to didn't seem to care. In fact, a few people -- close family friends -- that she had SWORN had met her mother multiple times had only varying degrees of vague recollections of Tricia -- a couple of older friends even referred to her as a "young woman" and one lady, when asked, kept telling Dana that Tricia was "the cutest baby" -- despite the fact that this person was clearly ten years younger than her mother.
Dana was appalled by the reactions to her mother's disappearance, and so she asked her friend Matt, a rookie cop, to help her investigate.
"Please, Matt," the curvy, busty brunette said to her friend. "You've got to come with me to look. I'm afraid something awful has happened."
"OK Dana," the muscular 25-year-old said. "I'll come with you to the beach, and we'll see if we can find any indication as to what happened to your sister."
"MOTHER!" Dana exclaimed. "She is my mother! And she's not even a young mother, she was 39 when she had me!" Even that felt wrong to Dana, even though it was true. Why did her mind's image of Tricia keep drifiting... younger?
The two headed to the small, lakeside beach that Tricia and her other friends often went to. It was a calm day. The only thing they could see out of the ordinary was a couple of cars in the lot, even though the beach was empty, and an abandoned fishing pole and bait bucket.
"That's my Aunt Claudia's car, I think," Dana said, referring to one of the vehicles.
"Well, that's a start," Matt said. "Look around and see if you can see anything else amiss."
The two split up and began looing around. Matt found some abandoned bathing suits scattered about.
Dana, meanwhile, was getting really panicked as she looked around. When suddenly, in the dune grass, a glint of purple light caught her eye.
"What's this?" she thought. She found herself inexplicably drawn to it.
It was a ring.