Solitude

Sometimes she walks down to the docks to watch the fishing boats return. She supposes it ought to mean something to her, but it does not.

She prefers to be high up on the headland on the opposite side of the bay. From there the boats glide into the docks like toys in a bath. The people look inconsequential and she feels a kind of indifferent omnipotence, as though she could destroy it all with a gesture. Just holding her hand up in front of her face makes the whole village disappear. Only the hotel on the beach road escapes her wrath.



She prefers to look around at the places that seem devoid of human presence: the empty sea, the thick woodland on the opposite headland. She thinks she may have grown sick of the society of her fellow man.

She turns and walks down the steep path, stumbling and slipping occasionally. Sometimes it seems as though she is not really here, as though she is a ghost who walks these paths seeking whatever it is that ghosts seek.