As we arrived onto the beach, he and I, our gasp stretched out along the long planes of sand laid out before us. To see a beach abroad with such colours was, of course, beautiful but you almost expected it. Perhaps I expected far less from the island that shaped me, where drizzle was its closest company. I suppose that’s why when the tiny grains of sand got stuck between my toes, it seemed to sandpaper away all the bad things I had ever said or done. Judging by the glassy look in his eyes, he too, felt humbled with the azure and white. Though, his eyes may have just been tired from searching for answers in the wind. That day, the wind swept through us clearing out our lungs and ears. It felt hard to describe, that feeling. You could say it was like a roar; a reverberating rumbling swallowing your eardrums, leaving you on a long-haul flight to anywhere. You could say it was like jamming your head inside a blue-sky tumble dryer. The rounds airing out any worries or responsibilities you had, too impatient to wait for the line. Or even, if you wanted to, at a stretch, you could imagine lying foetal in the belly of a waterfall, its liquid walls womb-like against all the man-made things of this world. Of course, you could say all those things and more because that’s how the imagination likes to play. It’s how we try to make sense of something as incredible as nature. But, on this cooler than before time evening, things felt a little easier to grasp; the salt a little easier to swallow. So, as the kite surfers’ multicoloured bands played along the shoreline they danced through what could only be described as the wind itself. Wild wind on a beach front’s belly hitting the cliffside with all the might the ocean had gifted it.

We walked up and down the beach without words picking plumply orange sea buckthorn with our forefingers and thumbs staining our fingertips. I had never felt a calm like it. It was grounding to feel such a way after so many years of travelling through trauma; to arrive at the porch of peace and say, “Yes, yes, I think I will come in for tea today. Here, I’ve brought you gifts of the wild”. As we continued to stroll, the wind lifted us to higher thoughts of faraway places and our bodies crossed paths with laughing children, their jaws cracked wide like split watermelons, seeds spraying out in the delight of a summer’s day. Small paw print pattering dogs and pups left their mark upon the beach as their owners wondered how they’d ever lived without them. Everything seemed brighter, lighter on a seaside day. The exhaustion of it would later tuck them beneath their blankets as the horizon tucked in the sun.

Around the corner, not far from it all, a small bay hid within the sandy mud. As we trudged through it the soles of our feet slipped and slid around leaving trails in the curves and crossovers. Other life sprung from it, and it too danced along its pools of stones and journeyed oysters. We laughed, just as the children had, at how freeing it felt to be silly. Did they too, smile back at the seaweed licking at the shoreline? Did they too, smile at the mud? As we listened to its tales of rising tides and hidden ocean treasures, the sunshine continued to play with its surface causing rainbows and raindrops to fall into it, and even more mud to grow from it. We thought the world was over as we walked on through the day, cutting up the sea breeze with the edge of our flip flops. Or, at least, we didn’t mind if it was over and even wished it was in some way. A strange feeling to feel what you truly are; existence and non-existence at the same time. Meeting of the two sides; you can’t recall one without recalling the other. Dampened sand from a late lowering tide rose over our toenails and we kicked it off. We dreamt of being pirates lost at sea not thinking of consequences. We dreamt of being crabs moving in different directions. Here we were, two children within two adults; a meeting of the two sides. One can’t grow without the other. Pulling at my hair as it trailed into the pitch black, I gathered it around my neck; to feel close to myself for a little while. He looked across at me, squinting his eyes, and gasped “Every bit of me is fucking freeeeezing! I am the cold right now”. “I am the cooold toooooo!” I replied, elongating my words also, as the cold often has us do. Usually, he would have pulled me into his side, closer to the warmth of his underarm and second-hand Regatta outdoor jacket, but today was a different day. Today we wanted to be the cold. To remind us that we were something other than ourselves and that we didn’t always have to be human.

In writing,
Charlotte Boyle