Chasing Pebbles

Ragged sea-offerings lie twisted and tide-torn, carelessly stomped about by a sharp northerly breeze. Seaweed and kelp strew helplessly across the sand, silently bleeding their vibrant colours to the dry suck of the lack-lustre sun. It's March, cold and biting, but no threatening clouds survive to dampen the sky.

Thrusting numbed glove-less hands deeper into her pockets, and mindful of the sudden rock-pools and miniature islands skirting at her feet, Adrian crunches across a narrow path of shingle, making her way towards the wide softer stretch of yielding sand which borders the waters edge. Picking her way around the hostile, beady stare of a resentful gang-thuggery of gulls, she braces her eyes against the tear-inducing wind to scan the shore-line.


Yes, he is there - the only other one fool enough to brace these elements, he is waiting. An involuntary smile hi-jacks her heart, and she quickens her pace.


He laughs, catches her excitement and throws his warmth about her. Erasing her life without him, she basks in this, her daily fix, light and twenty years young again, all is well.



"Have you been here long?"



He shrugs. "I'm always here."


"True."




Breathing his briney essence, she closes her eyes, drinking him in. They walk, pausing every now and then to examine a piece of treasure scattered along the shore. They know the art of dancing pebbles across the waves, have mastered the skills to condense the world in to one precious hour, and have the wisdom to know it is all and will only ever be, make believe. Outside her head the real world calls, a place they can never share. But here, tasting the sheer salt-spray joy of him, as each second is filled with a million shared thoughts..
It is enough.