Barefoot, I stepped onto the beach, bucket clutched in one hand, plastic shovel in the other. My chosen tools. With them, I shaped towers and dug moats with the precision of someone chasing permanence. Strangers would stop to admire my designs, or more likely, laugh at them. But with afternoon came the tide, sweeping inland. Indifferent and inescapable, it dissolved my creations into the sand.
I took steps to outwit the sea. Higher walls. Deeper trenches. I reinforced foundations with driftwood. And childhood stubbornness. But the water kept coming. I stayed until the chill wrapped my ankles, forcing a retreat. The ocean did not hurry. It did not rage. It simply returned.
Winters were different. Snowmen allowed time to accept the inevitable. They stood stiff and silent for days, black eyes staring into the cold. Each morning, I checked from the window, assessing their gradual decline. I tried packing the snow tighter, as if this might bargain with the thermometer. I learned it could not. In time, warmer temperatures slowly pulled them into the earth.
But the sand, every morning it asked me to begin again. Shape and lose, shape and lose. Until I stopped needing my creations to last. By summer’s end, I no longer mourned what the water took from me. I rebuilt, knowing the waves were watching. Knowing they would come. The magic was never in the keeping.
On my final evening, I left before water reached the first tower. I didn’t look back to watch it fall. I was already thinking about snowmen. With their own set of lessons, they’d be along soon enough.
Foster Trecost writes stories that are mostly made up. They tend to follow his attention span: sometimes short, sometimes very short. Recent work appears in Literally Stories, Fabula Argentea, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Roi Fainéant. He lives near New Orleans with his wife and dog.
Excellent, Foster. Niles
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