Part One Continued
She was very tired when she got to her Uncle's because of the cliff she had to climb to get there (It wasn't a big at-a-right-angle-to-the-ground cliff, more relaxed than that, but a cliff that is tiring to climb none-the-less). Her Uncle gave her Real Coffee from a glass jug. She felt a bit more awake then and took a walk down to the beach. Even though she didn't quite know why she was going there, she found herself walking with direction and purpose, like the sort of walk she used when going somewhere, like to work, although that wasn't strictly true as her footsteps were a little more slow and dragging when she was going to work but today she was feeling quite light and fast. It wasn't long before sand crunched softly below her boots. She looked about vaguely, not sure what to do next, a bit like someone with half an hour to wait for a train. She decided the best thing to do was whatever one would normally do on a beach, so she started picking up shells. There weren't many exciting ones, just cockles and mussels, but they glistened prettily and there were the odd bits of sea-polished glass, which she pretended were precious jewels. She progressed along the beach, her pockets getting fuller. Then, a voice said "Excuse me, but you're quite close to the water now and I think you may be about to get wet feet."
"Oh, That's ok my boots are waterproof…" she started to say before looking up. When her eyes rose to meet those of the individual concerned with the humidity of her toes, she stopped talking quite abruptly. There, bobbing on the waves where it really shouldn't have been, looking slightly embarrassed and very conspicuous amid the bemused gulls was a big black swan.
Continued on Page 3...
