I found her sitting alone, facing the sea. The sky was clear rapidly, but the smell of rain was there to stay. I watched few drops fall lazily from her wet hair. I struggled to gather my wits while her muffled sobs occasionally penetrated the silence. I had never seen her cry in the last eight years.
Unable to find my words, I sat down beside her. She held out a hand, and I gladly took it.
“Your hand is warm,” she sighed after a while.
“And yours is freezing,” I retorted. “Trying to be dramatic, are you?”
“The situation calls for a bit of drama; don’t you think?”
A few meters away, the fisherfolk were preparing sails to make use of the steady wind. Large numbers of fish would be gathering a few kilometers offshore right about now – where the muddy, landwashed water met the clear ocean. Every boat wanted to be the first to reach the temporary gold mine.
“This is not the end,” I said, with a lot of determination.
“It is not,” she replied.
We talked for hours before parting – about friends back at home, about life, and about the new world that awaited her across the ocean.
On my way back, as I looked back before turning the corner, I caught her waving and shouting something. But the wind carried her words away over the waters. How I wished I was the wind then! I’d have been the wind beneath her sails, untied from this place which would soon cease to be home.
Clubrun submission for LSD, IIMA.
