Holden

Crunch, crunch; the dreary fluff compressing beneath her feet as she used every piece of will power to press herself closer to class, and to the end of the semester. Grey skies, frigid air, diminishing daylight, and the earth devoid of greenery always broke her heart, but her mind sought out a different scene.

The beach! A different kind of compression beneath the balls of her feet, the sand was warm and shifted with each step, causing her leg muscles to work double time. She loved being made aware of how her muscles worked. Walking along sand, hiking, climbing; all tests of resilience, reward, and refinement. If her body froze, but her mind continued, she would rather die… For her, adventure was therapeutic for the dichotomy between body and soul. And the scenes to be re-imagined were reward enough.

Everything was painted in warm tones, and the ocean extended far, far beyond the horizon and dipped into nothing. The curves of the waves tossed the light rays at different angles, an enigmatic prism. The Creator would truly declare the fish happy where they lived, and Bob Ross would agree.

Sea creatures pull up on shore: some to stay, others to visit. Her favorites were the little clams that buried themselves beneath the sand right at the ocean’s edge. You could find them by looking for billions of little holes in the ground that would bubble when the tide receded. The sand pipers would run along the edge, pulling them up with their slender beaks for dinner, their shadows 4x their own size. If you went ahead of the pipers to the bubbling holes, and dug down, you could pull up some small clams of your own. You could even take a peak inside if you gently opened them partial way; but you had to be careful not to open them up fully, or they would die.

Watch out for the jellyfish, and the rip tides. She could spend 12 hours walking up and down the sand with friends, and exploring. Her skin was crispy by the end of the day, and whining, and her feet blistering, and throwing a toddler’s tantrum. She admired the 2cm blister, and considered it a trophy. You will heal and be fine, she told her foot as she walked for 8 more hours the next day, never adventuring more than 2 foot depth into the ocean.

All of her friends had beach houses up and down the shore; each new mile revealed a pick up game of volleyball, or soccer. There was always a set of girls tanning out on their towels, shortly followed by a small pack of boys wearing sunglasses, strolling by, attempting to sleuth a peak. She did likewise, but only to measure herself by comparison.

She collected her friends at their house, and all gathered together for a tourney of sand volleyball and coronas. Kicking ass in volleyball was also a trophy to collect at the beach. A long day of play, and some deck conversation, hot tubbin; time for bed. And in her sleep, the ocean claimed each one of her friends that were at the shore. The water turned to gravity while swimming, and she was pulled to the bottom with the angler fish neighbors. The waves proceeded far beyond their barriers, claiming her friends in the houses.

She woke up. FUCK that nightmare. Every year, it is the same. The waves crashing faster than she could run to warn her friends, “Get out! Get out of the water! Quit being stupid. Don’t you remember the riptides?”

In real life, sometimes, she wanted to warn people. But was she being over dramatic? Nagging? Mothering, smothering the fun? Was she being passive, unable to say something because she didn’t want to piss people off? Self protective, yet at the expense of their safety?

The nightmares in sleep, the play in the day. Walking along the shore, admiring the waves. Powerful, prowess, considerably plentiful.

As she walked across campus, the waves hurt her heart. So beautiful and so precious, and yet distressing. They had murdered two of her friends, but every year her friends still returned to play. It was a continual lesson to learn to respect the power and the beauty of the ocean. The power of grief washed over her and the sand melted back into snow in her mind's eye. She wanted to skip class today and go back to bed.