Tuesday 17 September 2013

staring

something a little different today

Her mind was far away and falling headlong into waves and wonder, and her thoughts wandered away from her body. Earth and sand and paperwork were songs of other places, because she was gone into lights on the ocean and the moon over the sea, the evening streetlights orange over the water.
The gentle touch on her shoulder startled her, and she jerked away.
“Don’t stare too long,” the man said. He had kind eyes. “Your mind wanders, down and deep and away, and one day it won’t come back.”
“I’ve stared before,” she said, still looking, still lost.
“Your mind is used to wandering. You are on top of the world, and you’re not afraid to fall.” She felt herself begin to reel back in, back to the empty shell of her body. She managed to glance at him. His kind eyes smiled.
“Why is that a bad thing?” she asked.
“In itself, it isn’t. But you go places, and if you stay away too long you forget who you are.”
“Sometimes that’s why I go.”
He nodded. She dug her toes into the sand, gazed past the cliffs and down into whatever lay beyond.  “I want to go places,” she whispered into the wind. “I want to live by the sea and sit on the sand every day and lose myself. I want to work when I want to and not have responsibilities I don’t care about. That’s why I stare. Because the sea is fickle and free and it doesn’t care about anyone else.”
“You can still care,” he said softly. “I still care.”
She glanced sharply at him, and saw his fingers begin to lengthen; his legs slowly shortened as his hair grew to flow down to the sand in a gentle wave of salt water and the memory of a smiling man with kind eyes.  

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