I step gently onto the ground as I glide across the shore, padding with a light caution to protect the un-callused skin coating the bottom of my slightly burnt feet, the covering not yet thick and worn from a full summer of bare use. The sand underfoot is a speckled grey, thoroughly beaten to a fine, almost silky carpet, dark with captured ocean and fresh with salty spray. As the seconds pass, the darkness below fades, and my feet somewhat sink, though they are not engulfed, only hugged around the edges so that if I stepped away, a slight shadow of myself would remain behind. I do not, however, move, and instead, allow the earth to slowly bend for my being. I feel miniscule grains of shell aged several millennia rush between my toes as the sea easily escapes the weak attempt to cage it. The next wave tears in, and I see it frothing and foaming, rabid and furious toward the shore, but as it reaches me, it is little more than a carbonated, salty trickle. As the water laps at my ankles, I turn toward the dunes, away from the infinite horizon and know that the slight depression I have left is already being brushed into oblivion, my only mark flicked aside. As I pad softly away, the ground transforms from bland silk to stained glass. The speckled grey sand brightens to a yellow tan, then fireworks to an endless prism of shells, appearing like millions of hooks, swirls, and bowls, across the now slightly undulating ground. Like stars in the Milky Way floating throughout an endless sea of blackness, the shells are scattered in hued bands across the beach, twinkling with reflected starlight. Above me, doming the serene landscape is an azure sky free from all but a few cotton ***** which have been stretched by the sea fairing breeze to be all but transparent. The smell of salt reaches my nose as a bucolic waft emanates from the expanse to my back. I close my eyes, shading my vision and trusting the peace of my surroundings to hold. The faded calls of gulls echo along the shore and the popping of sea foam bubbles sharpens as my mind turns to rely on the sense of sound. Opening my eyes again, I see nothing of the landscape’s composure has altered. But for all its calm tranquility, isn't it strange, that I am walking through a graveyard.
