The days passed by right under my feet. The wet sands drifted under my toes and under my soles as the time fled away with it. I was only a child. I sat along the water's edge, playing with the little sand crabs that danced around my frail little form. Their tiny black eyes looked at me, twitching with motion as they watched calmly.
From a couple feet away, something poked its head from out of the water. It had white ridges above its eyes and a bright teal color along its skin. Its eyes were like puddles of ink dancing in saucers of silver that gleamed in the orange glow of the sunset. As soon as it had come, it dipped its head back down and was gone again. Curious as I was at that young age, my little feet carried me into the water, my parents nowhere to be found on the beach.
I waded a few feet into the water, where the thing had once shown itself, and found nothing. Nothing except for a little white spiral seashell which clung onto the sands against the current. My little fingers dipped down into the water and I lifted it from its spot, shaking the sand and the saltwater from it and placing it in the pocket of my swim trunks.
Early the next morning, I'd awoken to the sound of a storm crashing along the rocks of the cliff by the beach. I knew I couldn't go out there, but something beckoned me, as if watching from afar. I got up giddily out of my tiny bed and looked out the window of my room, to find nothing but the graying seafoam rising and falling with the winds. But there was something else; there was something that my little brown eyes could not see out in the gray. So, I went back to sleep, anxious and wary of what exactly was out there on that beach.
I awoke later in the middle of the night to the faint sound of tapping against my window. The storm was still waging its fight along the cliffside, and the night sky combined with looming clouds shrouded any light from outside. I stayed in bed holding the covers up to my chest. My eyes squinted as I tried to look outside the window for a shape, or a light, or anything besides the unending black. The tapping persisted against the glass.
After a few minutes, I looked again at the window and noticed something peculiar. Two little dots among the black were a faint white. It wasn't like a glow or anything, but more of a shine, like a glistening bit of metal. In my sleepy daze, my mind raced, until it came to a halt at the idea that these were not lights in the distance or reflections from the inside of my room, but eyes. I looked over to my nightstand, my eyes falling upon the shadowy outline of the seashell I'd found the day before. My mouth came up into a smile as I knew that it was the thing from the beach that was watching over me, tapping on my window. It didn't take long for me to fall back asleep, knowing I was being safely guarded by a friend.
In the morning, the sun shone bright and I could hear the seagulls crying outside my window. As I rose, my tiny feet hitting the hardwood, they hit a small patch of water. I looked to the window, which was open now, and noticed a puddle of water under it and streaks of water going down the wall. My friend had visited me in the night! I ran outside and down to the beach as fast as my little legs could carry me. When I arrived, something was odd. The sand just where the tide met with the shore was stained a deep red. I sat, looking at it with my head tilted, and found another seashell, this one a brilliant green color.
I took it in my pocket once more, and waddled down the shore, my legs skimming the water as it crashed into the sand. I never questioned it. I never questioned why the white and the green shells stayed with me until I became older and moved into the city, when they disappeared. I never questioned what it was that stained the shoreline red. I never questioned why that same red was stained against the bedsheets when I woke up in the mornings to the scent of seawater and metal. I had always presumed the same: it was my friend from the beach.
END
