FREE 

 

 Random story I wrote...

 

 Saura was running across the beach. She suddenly stopped, letting her feet slow to a walk and then cease motion entirely, as her eyes wandered out to sea. Standing on a sand dune, she could see almost the entire beach around her- the sand, shells, and seaweed; the groups of children playing the day’s last game of tag before the sun set completely, and a few late afternoon dog walkers with their happy and excited charges bounding along beside them. But Saura wasn’t looking at these. She was staring at the sea.

 

Softly, quietly, the gulls scattered. The crabs scuttled into the tide pools left from the waves, which were lapping calmly at the beach, and Saura was running over them. No, not running- flying! Flying far out into the sea, and now the waves were no longer lapping, but crashing, spraying Saura with cold sea water. She was soaring now- flying and soaring, with the wind in her face over the vast water that seemed to go on forever, free to fly anywhere in the world over the rolling ocean…

 

“Hey, wake up over there! Yeah, you- Sarah or whatever your name is! You’re it!”

 

Saura was jolted out of her marine fantasy as the boy waved his hand in front of her daydreaming face. Reluctantly, and with a longing glance over her shoulder at the tantalizingly unreachable sea, she jumped off the dune and started chasing after the boy and the other children, who scattered as she ran towards them. She wasn’t ‘it’ for long- one thing she couldn’t get enough of was running, and a lot of the kids said, if a bit jealously, that “that one weird girl” could run as fast as the wind.

 

She was sitting, near to the water, in the wet, tide-licked sand, her eyes on the sea as her mind took a great journey across it. She would have given anything to be able to fly, to run across that wide blue expanse, run and run, with the wind in her face, run, as free as a flying seabird. She wanted to fly and run forever without being tied down to the land- the land wasn’t really hers. She wanted the freedom of the air and the sea, to fly and run. Run across that great field of blue, and maybe never return. She glanced back at the beach she sat on for a moment.

 

“Haven’t you made your sand castle yet?” a girl was asking her. Looking around, Saura noticed the other children had all built sand castles out of sand pressed into the shape of buckets, all looking the same, with a goal of height and nothing else.

 

“I’ll make one,” she said quietly, and began building a towerlike cave with the sand and her hands, gently molding it to look like the rocks along the shore. She dug a small pit in the middle of the castle and filled it with water, then wrapped a few of the towers with seaweed and topped them with bits of driftwood.

 

“No no no!” said the girl. “You’re doing it all wrong. You gotta use the bucket, like this, otherwise it’s not a castle and it looks like a cave or something. And you have to make a wall around it. And how come you’ve got a moat on the inside?”

 

Saura sighed. “This is a castle for fish and crabs and clams and starfish and things,” she explained. “The water’s so they’ve got a nice little pool, like the tide pools, and it’s supposed to look like a cave. Caves are what they’re used to.”

 

The girl rolled her eyes. “Who cares about crabs and stuff? Plus, your so-called ‘castle’ isn’t even as tall as one normal tower. Mine’s almost 5 feet high!”

 

The other children responded to this by numbers of their own. Their generic castles steadily grew in height until they all collapsed, causing their builders, who were now bored with castle-building, to start a new game. “C’mon”, said one of the girls. “Let’s go to the fort and play ‘house’. Last one there’s a rotten egg!” As the mob of children started a mad stampede towards the fort, Saura sprang to her feet and started running...in the opposite direction. She topped a small hill and kept going, racing a seagull for a part of it, and finally stopping at a small, hidden cavern. Climbing on top of the short cliff it was hidden in, she glanced back at the rest of the children. They were at the fort assigning parts; none of them bothered to look for Saura. They went on with their game without a thought to the daydreaming, crab castle-building girl who had suddenly disappeared from among them. Now, Saura thought, she was in her own game. But when she looked at the sea to imagine running and flying over the waves, it seemed a lot more possible than it had before. Laughing, she jumped off the rock and ran up a hill as fast as she ever had, Standing when she got to the top with her hands in fists and her arms as high as she could reach them. She could run as free as the wind now- she could almost fly, she could fly and keep flying forever. She looked out on the ocean. The waves were crashing on the rocks and the cliff edge, and Saura was standing on the hill with her arms spread out and the wind blowing wildly around her. Flying is one thing, she thought to herself. But even so- she glanced back at the knot of children at the fort, playing at wars and tea parties, then turned her eyes back to the sea and smiled. Yes, she thought. There are other ways to be free.