Chapter 1
It was a quiet place, where I stayed. I never minded that. I liked the quiet. The noise of the city had frustrated me, long when I was there. That was why I was here.
The beach that bordered my house, was also quiet. There was nary a visitor to it, me included. I secluded myself in the house.
But this quiet wasn’t particular only to the noises of humans. It pertained too, to the beach itself.
The ocean was noisy. When I had visited it in Florida, that is.
Here, it was not.
It kept to itself, as I did to myself. We almost had a tacit understanding, like humans often formed amongst themselves. Only, this understanding of ours was formed between a specter and the ever non-sentient ocean, as I assumed it to be. Perhaps it was a show of how humanity passed beyond just humans.
I had not seen humans in a while, and I wished it no other way. Monotony and routine melded together to form a peace that I knew. Solitary and confined of my own regard, I had achieved something lonely, but in a way that I could romanticize.
As each day blended into the next and last, everything seemed timeless.
Then there was the knock.
***
On a day like all others, I was doing what I always did, like I did on all others. I was knitting. I knitted often. What for? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t care to.
The red yarn spun in my arms with little significance. I knitted what I always did, a small part of a large tapestry. I didn’t know what led me to the pattern I followed. I just followed it.
As I did what was usual, something unusual followed.
An intruder had appeared.
A knock on the door was what lead me to this conclusion. I thought of everything that was to tresspass my peace, as an intruder, so this fell well into the bounds of the word’s meaning.
I ignored it. It didn’t repeat. It stopped at only one knock, so it wasn’t the worst kind of intrusion that I could’ve fathomed.
I forgot easy, so I forgot easy, that this had happened, and went back to knitting. Then to the Cello. Then to a night of empty dreams. Then to the bookshelf. Then to knitting again.
Then I remembered about it again, because it came to remind me with yet another knock, at what it had established to be, the usual time.
I put away my knitting and went to the door, only to find it empty. I hesitated. Then I sighed.
If fate willed me towards something, who was I to walk away from it? I took my first steps into a territory nearly alien to me. The beach.
But it was different from when I’d last been to it.
It had been empty then, untouched and uninhibited.
But the footsteps that now lingered on it, a short and straight trail to the ocean but not beyond it, changed that narrative. Neither of those words was applicable to it anymore.
Fate had tempted me enough.
***
