The Girl By the Sea

Once upon a time there was a girl. And this girl, see, she lived by the ocean. And every day she would go down to the beach and sit by the waves and think. She would think about life and about death, about the moon and the sun, about why the ocean was the way it was and about all the things she had ever heard and had ever seen.

And every day when she would go down to the beach she would sit on the sand and lay back and close her eyes while she thought, and let the sound of the crashing waves lull her into a semi-state of something or other. And in that state she tended to drift off, and when she tended to drift off, she tended to forget to breathe. And eventually she would be snapped back into the waking world and would sit up, take a deep breath, and forget everything she had ever thought that day.

And when she sat back up, and took a deep breath and forgot everything she had thought of that day, she would stand up, dust the sand from her dress, and turn her back to the ocean. She would close her eyes, listening to it for a moment as if trying to recall all those long lost words and phrases. But when nothing came back to her she would open her eyes and make her way back up from the beach, back into her little house with her little room full of stars and paintings and half-finished stories all over the floor. She would climb into her bed, pull the blankets up to her chin, and fall asleep, to dream of things she wouldn't even remember in the morning. And the next day when she awoke, she would go back down and lay on the beach, close her eyes, and listen to the waves.