Ursa Minor (On hiatus)

A grain of sand pt. III

A/N: Hi everyone! This will be the last chapter for about 5-6 weeks, so go find something else nice to read for the summer! (I'd recommend Jeffrey Eugenides, his books will last all those weeks.) While I'm away I'd really appreciate if some of you would take a minute or two and give me some feedback on my writing, a little bit more detailed than usual. I've grown confident with your help, so now I can handle it! ;)  For example: your favorite/least favorite character, favorite/least favorite chapter/scene, strongest/weakest points in my writing, what you would like to read more/less about, etc. An extra sentence or two. Leave a comment or send me a message, I'll be forever grateful! See you soon!

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It was so windy. So cold. It was awesome. I felt it like my mind was spring-cleaned walking along the desolate shore, the dust and the cobwebs and the repetitive thoughts swept away. I could think, or just not think at all. I could breathe. I could finally fucking breathe. Sea and shore and sky. All three shifting in the same color. Sea-gray and shore-gray and sky-gray. Not a person in sight for miles. My eyes resting, my mind resting, my feet walking seemingly by themselves along the shoreline.

A couple of feet behind me Allen meandered, sometimes closer sometimes stopping. I heard the sound of the shutter sporadically. We didn't speak. There was a time for talking and a time for silence. Allen knew that. Another thing I liked. I thought of what he had said. 'I'm so happy I met you', and I envied the way he he'd said it, so simply and straight-forward. He just wanted to say it, and then he did. To me there always seemed to be so many what if's. So many things left unsaid. Important things. Good things. Beautiful things even. Why did I still always tell people the bad and kept the good like secrets?

I glanced over at Allen, his back to me, camera in hand, focusing on the houses in the distance. 

'I'm so happy I met you'. Would it be so bad to say it? Would the sky come crashing down on me. Probably not. But then what if... The thoughts I'd believed to be cleared away instantly started whirling. I continued ahead, tried to focus on the skyline again. The intersection between gray and gray. My own company surely wasn't always the best company for me.

My feet slowing down, sincking into the sand. Wasn't sure for how long we'd been walking. An hour? More than that? The wind singing in my ears. I felt light-headed, pulled the hood tighter around my face with my hands, turning to Allen. He was balancing on a slippery outlier of rocks, trying to capture, well, something important apparently. Great. 

"Don't fall in or crack you head or something, I don't know CPR." 

"No, no, don't worry," he said reassuringly, taking a few steps closer. To the sea that was. Fucking great. He'd fall in and I'd have to try and drag him up. I hadn't done any swimming for years, maybe I wouldn't even remember how. I balanced out after him, step by step, stone by stone. Strange feeling like you were standing in the middle of the sea. The water slowly moving and opaquely dark. A wave curling over my left foot. Yeah, right in the fucking middle. 

"Allen, seriously." I tried to sound un-whiny. No success. 

"Yeah, I'm done." He rose from his kneeling position, skipping past me where I was standing, gripping on to the rocks with my feet. I carefully placed my steps following him. Something glimmering in between two rocks caught my eye. Probably nothing. I bent down, fished it out. It was like a stone, blue, irregular. Once translucent, now it was smooth and opaque, brushed by millions of grains of sand. It must have been there for ages. 

"What are you doing?" Allen already on the shore called after me. 

"Nothing." I hid it in my hand, continued step by step, stone by stone. My left foot soaking wet.