Down by the Water

– DRIFT – 

The sand burnt his bare feet as Rudy pushed along the briny beach. This act wasn’t necessarily even from the heat–it was a cloudy day, as expected in his salt-kissed town–a brisk wind would have made even those with amphibian blood reach for their thickest sweater. But not Rudy. He didn’t mind the cold or the gloomy sky. He just pushed along, letting the rough sand exfoliate the tender skin beneath his toes. He stopped for a moment to stare at the ocean, analyze the waves and imagine what they might feel like rushing over his face if he had his surfboard with him. His eyes began to water as he envisioned the ocean’s saltiness that always stung him to tears. He considered jumping in. Let the waves take him out to sea, far, far from here. And it was in this contemplation–this moment of solitude and sadness and creeping cowardness, that he curled his long toes to propel him into the water, and in doing so, tangled them tightly in what felt like a cluster of fresh seaweed. Rudy bent down quickly to remove the sea bits holding him back from his fate, to find it wasn’t sea bits at all, but the long brown hair of a small, tiny head.

Rudy froze and watched as the tiny head opened its eyes and found his. They stared at each other in silence, the waves crashing into the shore. Rudy noted that its eyes were blue, the same color as Rudy’s, and the same color as the ocean on a clear day, far from the chaos of a storm that blended its soil and darkened its hue. It had thick purse lips and Rudy couldn’t help himself from imagining what it would feel like to kiss a mouth like that. He failed. Its skin was tan. A tan baked in from the sun, and not the deeper hue gifted by birth and genetics. Its brown hair framed its tiny face like a hug, cuddling it tightly like a mother holding her newborn child. The waves continued to break onto the beach, their water rushing over the sand, quickly engulfing the tiny head in its presence, before dashing back out to sea. The tiny head blinked the water out of its eyes and its mouth made a small little sound, wwhh! coughing out the water and sand from its mouth, like the echo of a pebble splashing into a puddle. Rudy let out a small, startled laugh. Not because it was funny—but because he didn’t know what else to do. He reached down to scoop the tiny head into his arms, holding it tightly against his small chest. Rudy didn’t know what made him reach down and lift the tiny head. Maybe it was the way it blinked. Maybe it was because no one had looked at him like that in a long time. He took the bottom of his shirt and wiped the sea bits from the tiny head’s cheeks, its eyes blinking softly, before plopping it gently on a sweater in the bottom of his tote bag.