Going Home

The beach stretched out between the enclosing cliffs. The sand, a soft pale brown, curving as the sea lapped calmly at its edges. The beach itself rose slowly towards undulating dunes. The grass on the dunes whispered back to the sea. The waves calling and the grass responding as the breeze blew. The breeze, this morning, was stronger, blowing her long hair into her face. She could taste the salt on the breeze and feel it in her hair too, brushing against the bare skin of her face.

She walked on, down between the dunes and over the soft shifting sand at the top of the beach. Her feet borrowed into the shifting sand with each step, slowing her down, making her stride rather than walk. She had to lift each foot clear of the sand that poured into each footprint, covering her foot with every step.

Then she was out on the damp said, left by the retreating tide. This was hard for a while, then wet. Her feet sank in to the sand again, not so much this time. Now, though, each footprint filed with sea water as she placed her weight on that foot, sucking her feet into the sand.

She dragged her hair out of her eyes as she glanced back to the place where she’d left her clothes, even though she knew she wasn’t going back. She looked down at her naked body, down her long legs, to where the sand was covering her feet, washed every now and then by the sea as the waves finished against the shore in a slow trickle. She looked out to see, then back at the land.

She walked out into the sea until she could walk no more and her feet no longer touched the bottom. She waited there for a while, arms sculling on the surface of the sea, looking back at the land she’d left behind as the slow waves rolled over and past her.

Then she was ready.

She turned back to face the horizon and dived deep, her silver bright tail flashing, where her legs used to be, as she swam down deep back to her home.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US)]