Home.

She came home last week. Her soul, delayed for six years, dragged back here by her weary, wandering, impoverished feet having already deserted their own helpless body; floating aimlessly in the abyss of day dreams and night time terrors, she landed here, on sandy shores, sprinkled with prickled bushes and beach shrubs..


Her body, though encrusted with seaweed and bitter brine from the waters, glimmers like the crystals of water running free down her body, as if they were enjoying their freedom for the dark sea. She is not shipwrecked, nor lost, nor washed ashore on some heavenly bay of the gods, she is home; but she is unaware of how much significance the lapping waves, tainted by milky white tips have.


The sun is up high, it must be nearing midday, but nothing of time or reality can really be felt, only the ecstatic giggling of waves as they gently glide down on the hard, cool sand, before softly retreating home, back into Neptune's cave. Those sparkling waters, the serenity, yet brutality of the waves, the high sun's rays brightening everything in sight; it was all so sublime, so exquisite. Despite her awe of the enticing landscape, Cherry failed to notice the way the Wind, mindful and gentle, charmingly motored a light breeze mirroring how a mighty hand might nudge someone on their way from the sloping hard sand onto the paler, more inviting grains with gentle caresses of his invisible forces. Cherry, on reaching the top of the slope, faintly collapsed in the way that weary bodies keel over after utter exhaustion. The chalky sand began gently soothing her grubby feet, prickled and pinched bythe dune plants which peeped among the fragments of the warm silk beneath her. Cushioning her raw soles, Cherry could not help but allow the delightful massages from the rippling grains and softkisses from the sun to overcome her, and soon those soporific lids yielded to the warm breezes.


A deep mist invaded her psyche, objecting light's admittance into the corridors of her brain. Her eyes flicker from empty room to empty room. Her legs mechanically run, never conquered by fatigue, but fueled by horror. Her chest pulses rapidly. However, like a grandfather clock being launched out a five story window, no time at all seems to pass whilst she darts around the empty chambers, frantic, searching, lost in her own mind; on her own soil.

A tumultuous clap of thunderclouds shakes her from the internal darkness of her mind, but now the hellish gloom pervades reality. The rain beats down. The sand is ripped apart. The grains which were once as soft as velvet are flung up and hammer into the concrete ground. All forces focus on their victim: vicious and merciless, the razor-shards of sand tear at Cherry's salty arms and back as she leaves them exposes having recoiled into a less vulnerable position. She cries out a devastating scream when the relentless stony jabbing now draws blood on her shoulders, but her shouts for mercy do not seem to inspire any sympathy on those who control the weather. Weak, dehydrated and now with her body covered in blood and sand, Cherry seeks refuge by slowly, but productively heaving herself back into the monstrosity that brought her to this doom in the beginning: the Ocean.


Never in her life had anything been as refreshing than the instant Cherry dived into the stirring waves. The violence above the surface softened abruptly and an air of tranquility arose. Cherry descended deeper and deeper into her liquid garrison of still numbness, frantically trying to shake the raucous sound of the splattering pebbles of rain. With her eyes shut and her breath held, she waited. The mist was seeping back into her thoughts; that awful darkness. But the storm, the precipitation, it would rip her limb from limb, shredding her bones, heart and body; she must remain under the refuge of the compassionate sea. The oxygen gathered when inland was depleting, Cherry thought that if she did not surface now her body may collapse and just one sharp intake of salt water may drown her lungs and destroy her. Yet the rain was like icicles plummeting from the dark sky, shivering, waiting to kill. Either way, Cherry was against some force of nature (the Water offered only temperamental relief, she was not expected to stay under forever).

With the light fading, and her head soaring away from consciousness, away from survival, Cherry dragged her now weighty arms through the thick water towards what she believed to be ultimate death directly above her.

The water parted for her struggling head and neck when she came up, vehemently spluttering and coughing out the significant volume of water which had begun to pervade her organs during her dive. Her eyes, kept shut due to the brine burned when she pried them open; the light trickled down from the heavenly sky.

She opened them wide. The rain had stopped. There was the high Sun, smiling, coaxing, as if it had never experienced a storm in its entire existence. The sand hugged onto her body, as if each grain had absorbed the golden elation emitted from the inviting rays of the Sun and wanted to share their joy.

Cherry Reason, perched knee deep in the shallow, lukewarm water scanned the shore: the glowing sand, the deep greens and purples of the vegetation on the banks, the smooth, crystalline sky, free from any clouds.

Here she sat; she is Home.

Copyright © JRFB 2012