SHE LOOKED OUT OVER THE PALE BLUE OCEAN and dug her feet into the hot sand.
Earlier in the day, she had picked up a single grain, just to see how small it would be in her hand and what it might feel like. She cast it aside. Utterly unremarkable, she thought disappointed. She listened to the sound of the waves breaking on the beach, methodically, one after another, as if the latter one were in pursuit of the earlier. It was a calm day – but she couldn’t stop herself from imagining that somewhere far off, on the very same ocean, a dark storm raged.
She had left in search for answers; or perhaps not – perhaps she had left, simply for the sake of leaving. But answers she sought nonetheless – just like you and me – and they had eluded her so far. Tomorrow she would return, and the thought of this also cast a shadow over her heart; though she wouldn’t have remained either, had she had the choice. It was not her homecoming that deterred her so much as the repetitiveness that came with it; and she was afraid that old routines would sap her of the imaginative powers she believed to have recently discovered. But in reality, she knew, it was not repetition she would be returning to so much as routine, and she also knew that routine brought with it a different kind of power.
Squinting, she glared up at the sun. It glared back at her angrily.
The fact of the matter was this: She felt lost and depleted. She’d been pushing, every day, but still, she did not know what it was she was pushing toward. The vision had become muddled and so, too often she felt like she was simply pushing for the sake of pushing. Without a goal, without a direction.
Where was her North Star? she would ask herself. Was she even pushing in the right direction? She did not know. Still, keep going, they would tell her. Even the oracle had said: She must keep going, she must endure, she must have faith – and there would be great rewards, glittering treasures, to be had over the course of the journey! Endure, and she would be crowned a queen! This is what the oracle had said.
But she was tired of pushing and of putting her hopes in faith. She did not know what these rewards were, what these treasures the soothsayer spoke of, would be – if indeed there were any treasures to be had. She did not know if she was doing things right. And she did not know even, if she desired a crown.
As the pale blue ocean crept up ever closer, she let a handful of sand run through her fingers and drizzle to the ground. Utterly unremarkable, she thought, digging in her toes.
She imagined him sitting down next to her.
“What are you thinking about?” he would ask.
And she would flick away the final grain of sand and respond:
“Nothing.”
THE END
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