1 A wave washed against her shore. A beach crowded with blue and white pots, small houses and narrow, sweet smelling lanes. A wave dissolved some of the papers on the table. She sat and watched it wash around, a stone at her back. She heard it in her ears. A small town, many families, all of them in clusters. And, though she did not like to think of it, some of them anyway, did not stay. Their houses were empty, their gardens overgrown, their dogs missing. She remembered again the wave and realized she had heard it before. In an unexpected, yet familiar wave. She remembered the sound of it and recalled the energy in it. It somehow stayed in her memory, even now. But it was momentary. She turned away, this time more quickly, and felt the tide pool of her mind.
2 A man, with a dog, waited alone by a river. He was cold and looked up at the sky. He remembered the neatness and order of his garden, the line of carrots he had planted the week before but which had yet to grow so long. Every week or so he would check his carrots, and he had checked them the day before, but, though they looked healthy, they never grew. So he tried again. But the next day, he checked again and the day after that. And a week later, he still checked. And he never saw another one rise, nor did they ever look up at the sky. In fact, he never saw the people from his village in the sky at all. He did not really need to.
3 The man looked on at the frame around him by the river. The river had a slow current and he could not swim. He realized that it was one day out of a week and he was left, again, alone. Though he had heard family stories about how someone would, every now and again, join some man in his abandoned house and strange. But he never had a family and wasn't sure what to believe. He did not really believe in fairies, he thought this. But he did not really believe anything consciously. The man with the dog, at his side, was tied to a post. It shook the bark from its skin. And the man sighed. Then he closed his eyes and thought of pretty fires and the yellow patches made by sun through the trees.
4 She felt a chill fall against her and a feeling like a falling wave rose in her mind. She paused, for a moment and then she turned her thoughts away. She did not like the more subtle approach to horizon. Perhaps she was getting old and would learn to settle, as others seemed to have. Maybe she would finally find happiness, in her own way, too. Maybe she would. But for now, there were more pressing matters at hand. She was in a small town and there were too many lovely things here. She was here to be with a man who knew her sometimes and other times not at all. And he was here to write another book. He had published several but never large ones.
5 They were in a small town that felt familiar and new. They were in the same bed for warmth, sometimes. But the bed was not made for two and was so thin that she could almost touch the side of her boyfriend's wall. She sometimes reached out but just smiled. The muffled sound of his breathing sometimes comforted her in the dark. He was tall and quiet, dark and deep.
