OMOLARA ADAMS BEAUCHAMP

CHAPTER ONE

The waves crashed softly against the pale brown sands of the beach.

A slender chocolate-skinned girl strolled through the empty, but vast seashore. She felt at peace. She could remember how her life began like yesterday or the curse rather.

Her hands adjusted the turtleneck, clasping her neck as she brushed a long braid of plaited cornrow, making sure most of it was round her neck than just falling to the back of her lower back.

The sprays clutched her naked ankles. Soles that pressed the soft grains slipped out into a sprint, leaving splashes of light mud into the air, in her wake.

As she ran, a cloth hung to dry, running against the wind in her long-sleeved pastel green and burgundy skirt that brushed her lean legs.

Sometimes she would stop when she thought she caught a glint washed into shore and stuck, other times she would burst into a run and then a soft jog until it was just slow trots.

The sun was rising and Omolara Adams Beauchamp loved sunsets and sunrises.

She was strolling her way back, looking beyond at the horizon as the sun rose slow and then what seemed like a steady pull, dangling here, dangling there and then positioned in place.

She burst into a chuckle, at her thoughts. She did have a wild imagination; something frowned upon in these parts.

The three hundred inhabitants were practical and sensible: Fishermen, and sellers of fish; swimmers and merchants. She was a collector of things, extraordinary things that washed on the ocean and that dwelt down the bottom of the sea.

At the brooks of the Island where the rocks were too slippery for any sane human to tread, especially at this hour when the tide was up, Lara leapt on a blunt surface. Like a game of skip she leapt like one dancing to an interior tune, such was her grace, landed not as gracefully as before into a patch of puddles.

This was the most dangerous part of this island, where sailors were known to dash to their deaths. It was also an impractical place, where it was rumoured amongst the Islanders that ghost dwelt; ghosts of sailors who had fallen to their death, haunted souls.

Lara did not meet any ghosts and knew very well that it was just hallucinations of stupid people. She stripped off her cardigan and the skirt, folding it as nicely as one could a slippery, wet terrain, so that she was just in her bathing suit.

She trod softly and carefully at this point further into the fog, slipping past the shallow plane, in addition, readied herself to dive into the deeper parts; in a swift sweep, splashed into the obscure madness, resurfacing to catch her breath.

Her hands shot back to her neck where the gills grew more pronounced, feeling at home moving in its intake and exchange of oxygen. She buried her neck in as her glassy eyes swept through, as usual: no one lurked around (not even the adventurous Fishermen).

She snatched the worn sac, dangling from a crevice and hung it around her shoulders.

Fighting against the violent pull of the water that was crashing, wearing away the sediments, she propelled herself into the air once more and with her powerful tail splashed noisily into a ten-mile distance, diving deeper to the bottom.

It was not as chaotic below, more static and feeling; the soft swish of her commanding tail, the bubbles that slipped out of her full lips and cherubic, Nubian nose.

She blinked her eyes, glazed to help her better when she was in the water, deciding what direction to go.

She had never really had a problem with indecisiveness until now. Her supplier had demanded something more exotic as if he could get what she offered anywhere around town.