The sea beat relentlessly against Sarah’s dreams. She stood—somehow both herself and not herself—on the coarse grass of a rugged headland. The smell of salt sharpened the air. A hedgerow banked sharply down to the right, and a cold wind rippled through its densely packed, rambling briars. A small gap marked its center, and a rocky path led through it, running down the steep incline to the cliff face and, beyond that, a rough shingle beach. The sea echoed below her feet, drawing and rushing on the rocks.
Sarah wanted to pick her way down the path, but something—some dream-heightened sense of need or impossibility—stopped her, and she turned to look along the cliff instead.
“Charlotte?”
Sarah found her dream-mouth moved strangely, unconnected with the sound of the word, even as her aunt—a floral print shift dress loose on her thin frame—smiled in greeting.
It had been a tumor, Sarah knew that: a fast, effective, evil thing whose devastation had been swift and ruthless. Yet Charlotte didn’t seem truly ill.
Not here, not like this.
That smile.
Sarah remembered it so well, conjured from a dozen childhood visits. Blue eyes shone, ash-blonde hair whipped to delicate strands in the wind.
Charlotte pointed, and Sarah followed the line of her slim hand. Sunlight—the pale, butter-gold glitter of dawn—touched the water and sent it shining like a crystal chandelier. Sarah wanted to paint it, capture it, at least say how beautiful it looked…but Charlotte wasn’t there.
In her place, another figure stood. A man…broad-shouldered and fair-haired, his back to Sarah, stared out at the sea. He seemed just out of reach, further along the cliff in the strange, perspectiveless plane of dreams, and Sarah—the part of her aware that this wasn’t real—distinctly thought: typical.
Isn’t the guy always just out of reach?
Something about him made her want to see his face. He emanated such a sense of…what? Sadness, melancholy, but something else besides that. Sarah was almost a little afraid that he’d turn around. The wind ruffled his blond hair. Sarah’s breath reverberated in her dry, taut throat.
Why did he affect her this way? As if she grasped at some meaning, some clue in his presence…. She felt sure there was something she should understand. But he didn’t turn. He didn’t speak, and the waves continued to pound the foot of the cliff.
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