Monday, February 18, 2008

At School by the Sea

She’d been at the school for two terms now, with a reputation for being a loner when in truth she was simply alone. Perhaps it was best. Girl cliques can turn on one of the own like sharks with the scent of blood in the water. Some girls would betray all their friends to be the most popular girl in the school. Katherine’s only choice was vilification for copying the others, in a vain attempt to fit in, or ostracism for being herself. Alone in the dorm, she flicked through her diary for the new year, tearing out all the information save the phases of the moon.

She slipped through the woods and took the off limits path to the cliff tops. She clambered down the sandstone blocks, the cliff fortifications so eroded that it was hard to swear where the sport of nature ended and the work of man began. She was relieved to find her favourite cubby hole free of courting couples, glue sniffing pre teens or self pleasuring tramps. Framed by the embrace of the sheer crags around here, the sea lay like before her like a millionaire’s private movie screen. The wash and boom of the waves, a dizzying leap below her, churned in Dolby stereo sound. Impossibly ugly container vessels, long having abandoned any attempt at being ships, clopped along the horizon. A few gulls wheeled and clamoured, though they no longer nested here. She clutched a book as she always did, but seldom cracked its pages. The sea here knew everything she needed to know.

There was more though, sweet as it was in the last of the sunshine, she longed for the first of the autumn gales. She would stand here, the wind slapping her face like a mother, giving herself to the elements, the weather and the iron in the rain. She’d been taught that every drop of water on earth had been brought here by comets, plunging to the steaming planet in its infancy. Every drop of rain, every slash of spray, dreamt of comets from the furthest reaches of the heliosphere. A rain of destruction had brought life to the world. There was always hope. All she had to do was find a way to hang on. Everything would turn up in time, where else was it going to be?

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