The crests and troughs of the night were already beating along the shore. Oh, how badly she wished to be released from Rickshaw! Up there, on the rocky cliff dotted with pink salt sand and red paint chips was the bane of her very existence; the threat to her spinning world. She leaped across the path of granite and slate as she always did. But she was careful not to latch too strong a grip on the jagged surfaces, sure to remember the rhythm that would not stop beating against her blouse.

 

Her stockings were soaked and her shoes were withering away like each new grain of sand etched with fervor by the unwavering sea before her. It was time for the awakening. It had been decided and there wouldn't be a sufficient number of minutes in her lifetime for her to understand anyway. She would have to begin.

 

Everything Leana knew about the world seemed to be shifting these days. Her father, with his sailor's tooth and backward glance, was keeping secrets from her about what the boys said in town. All she knew was that they scampered away anytime the pair of them wandered onto the mainland, his tight grip on her wrist sending their wandering eyes back to the caves that haunted them with dreams and demons. When she'd ask him about it, saying "Pa, why do they run like you've got the devil in your eye?", he'd do nothing but cast his eyes back out to the sea. She wondered sometimes if he could see further than she could.

 

 And the tide was changing, too. Why'd it have to do that to her? The seashells used to be the perfect picking size for her bouquets. She'd line the lighthouse with them; sky blues and salmon pinks and seaweed greens, all splayed with incredible intricacy in ebbing swirls and bursts. The place used to feel alive with as much spirit as she could muster, all because the sea had listened to her pleas for beautiful things. But it seemed to hold less vigor now with each breath to the shoreline. Even the seagulls could agree. 

She stood at the water's edge, the small lips of salt foam creeping up to her ankles with the familiar pecks she greeted each day.

 

"I don't see why you've got to be so coy with the way you've been acting lately."

The bubbles slowly fell through the mud as a child looks down from his disappointed mother at his feet, dangling the broken teacup behind his back.

 

"Anyway, you're not the only one who's been acting strange." 

Just then, she felt the wind pick up and the clouds rise further away from her fingertips. The familiar misty glow of the lighthouse shined more brightly than she would've liked as it illuminated her trembling legs and arms, the pieces beneath her feet glittering like diamonds.

 

 She knew it as soon as it happened. For a moment she was still, for a moment the waves held their breaths along with her as the world watched and waited for a sign of momentum. She was entirely in control of the ever-changing shifts in the cosmos, yet suddenly she could not hold all that was within her. The first drop of scarlet hit the dusty white powder below and she gazed at the sky with a feeling that everything she'd ever once laid claim to was now slipping through her fingers as fast as the comet now striking across the horizon.

 

 So the time had come, and now explanations were due. Behind a storm cloud emerged a bright beam of light casting down to reflect off each of her eyelashes. She should have squinted hard against the moon in all her shimmering glory, but Leana stood firm.

 

 "Why?" was all she could muster. It took everything within her to hold herself against the tears that were sure to come flooding at any second. The tide breathed in once more and came pelting back with a crash that nearly drowned out the hesitancy in her voice. So she said it once more, louder.

 

 "Have you not taken enough from me? The winds have changed, my hands are calloused and bruised, and my eyes only see so far past the ships that whisk by and leave me for better shores!" The tears were furious now, as furious as the stream slowly boiling down her thighs and past the leather buckle on her shoe.

 

 And the moon was puzzled for a moment.

 

 No one had spoken like this to her before.

 

 Perhaps it was something about the way that comet had obeyed her command so beautifully that moment before. She had been planning it out for eons and was delighted to see it all come right to fruition on such a night. Perhaps it was this change in the wind the child below her had pointed out with such agency, such determination against the circumstances. Or it may have been even the slight gleam in the child's eye that the moon found such pride in casting back at herself. Yes, she had done quite nicely with this one's hazel glow glaring back at her. Whatever the case, she felt different about this one. Perhaps she would humor her for a while.

 

 "My dear," the moon began.

 

 Leana didn't flinch. Other children would laugh on the mainland when she'd whisper to the oysters or giggle at the sand she held in the palms of her hands, but she knew better by now that anything could speak to her if she gave it a chance. And so she simply waited. She was seething. She would receive a response.

 

 "My dear, the gifts I grant are never in vain."

 

 The moon glowed with vibrant regality down at the poor girl, feeling the pain tightening beneath the child's belt as it invaded its way into the depths of her spirit and choked it quite nearly out of her throat.

 

 "Why would I want your gift? I was happy without it, I need it all back the way it was," Leana croaked.

"But my dear, I just saw in the twiddling of your fingers and the sharpness of your tongue that you were not happy. I did not take the horizon from you. I do not influence the whisks of the winds. The calluses you've formed are your own, and the bruises you bear are stains left by the cliffs you explore of your own volition."

 

 "What are you saying?" Leana pleaded.

 

 "I say that what I've given you, and all it will continue to bring is a predetermined catalyst to match the gravity of your life as it beats on. When you bleed, you feel the weight of the past shatter within you and escape into the world you will dazzle and shape one day with your little fingers. You will learn to mourn it and find yourself in the woman you continue to discover with every stone unturned, with each scrape and bruise."

 

Leana was silent for a moment. She knew it was not right, she knew it wasn't easy. And she pondered for a moment the fact that there was nothing in this life or this world or this universe she could do to stop it. As the moon disappeared back behind her cloud, satisfied with the work she had done and the wonderful night she had guided into serendipity, Leana dropped her gaze back to the sea before her. It met her on her level, the blue ever so slightly brighter with the first peak of the light from the east. She knew not what the woman within her would bring, but her fire had ignited and began to burn stronger than a need for justice as she wiped her skirt up her legs and brushed the tears away from her eyes. With a sigh and one more breath in unison with the sea for good measure, she turned on her heel and towards the sunrise.