In the gap between her eyelashes the sun glinted off the fine dusting of sand that stuck to the hairs of her arm, each grain making a tiny shadow like a freckle on her skin. Nothing existed beyond that except the glistening water and the gentle ripple as the waves rolled in and back out in a ceaseless rhythm. The back of her calves prickled in the heat and a single drip of salt water reached the end of a lock of hair then dripped and trickled with cool exquisite slowness across her shoulder. Beneath her fingers tiny sand avalanches fell from tiny dunes. The art of it was not to move, to barely breathe, that way you could hold it in suspended animation. The sky a perfect blue; the sea a perfect green; the utter stillness of the warm air; as if the whole of life had been leading up to this place and time there was not a single thing to do but lie here in this moment of utter bliss.
Tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow she'd tell the kids that the jelly fish had all gone.
(Linking back Magpie Tales)
