He picked his way over the uneven ground and crept towards her. Blanket. He had a blanket in his hands.
She might still have her wits about her, but her wolf was a creature of instinct, and right now, the animal was shivering and in pain. Blankets meant warmth. Comfort.
“Come with Paddy. He’ll hide ya’ till it’s time for air to find ya’.”
Farren crawled over to the man, and when he wrapped the blanket around her wolf’s torso, she relaxed. He’d help her. He’d keep her safe.
* * *
Eli
As the sun set, the crowds dwindled until Eli was alone on the beach save for a young man on a surfboard trying to catch that one perfect wave.
For a full hundred meters, a massive phoenix graced the sand, its wings spread in flight with flames dripping from its tail. He wasn’t sure why he’d felt so compelled to create the mythical bird out of hard packed sand using only his hands and the bare minimum of tools, but then again, he never knew what form his sculptures would take until they were complete.
The hours he spent working? He had little to no memory of them. Every time. He created until his muscles ached and his hands were blistered and raw. Until something inside him let him know he was done.
The tide had already started to rise, and he dug his fingers into the sand until he touched the tip of the magnificent bird’s beak, marring his creation and freeing him from whatever hold the artwork had over him.
Knowing all his work would be washed away overnight didn’t sadden him. If anything, it gave him hope.
Tomorrow, the beach would be someone else’s fresh canvas. A new start. A clean slate.
He’d been lucky. No one had come to stop him. These random, unplanned demonstrations of his artistic talents weren’t licensed or sanctioned by the government, and he knew he risked arrest. But when he was between sculpting projects, he often felt the need to “play in the sand,” as his last girlfriend had once called it.
Tipping the bucket next to him, he let out a low whistle. He’d collected over a thousand euros today. Passersby would often drop coins or bills for him as they watched his creations come to life—a little extra if he offered to sculpt their likenesses off to the side of his “canvas.”
Today, he’d worked his magic to create an image of an entire family. Mother, father, two daughters, and a son. The youngest child—a girl—had been so enthralled by seeing him draw her mother’s likeness in the sand that she’d clapped and giggled the whole time. And then the father had dropped a fat wad of bills into the bucket.
The waves crested twenty meters away, and the very end of the phoenix tail disappeared—lost to the sea. The lone surfer paddled back out over the breaking surf, and Eli peered up at the horizon. Black clouds were rolling in, and the wind had started to howl. Or warn.
Get back to the beach, you dolt.
The kid toppled off his board, then got right back up, heading out to catch his perfect wave again and again, and by the time Eli had finished packing up his tools, the rain soaked his jet black hair. His phoenix was no more, and he checked all around him. Not a single soul graced the shrinking strip of sand. He couldn’t just leave. Not with the surfer still out there.
He approached the high water mark and started waving his arms at the young man, signaling him to come in. Finally, the guy nodded, but then cast a quick glance behind him.
“No!” Eli shouted. The wave had to be at least twenty meters tall, and the surfer started to spiral his arms frantically, trying to outrun what could never,everbe beaten. The kid didn’t have a chance.
Churning white water pulled man and board under, and Eli stood, his feet rooted to the sand. He could do nothing but watch as the ocean came for him, and when the rush of the inflow knocked him head over heels, he tasted the sea, choked on it, and fought its pull.
He didn’t know which way was up. The water stole everything from him. His view of the sky. His voice. Even his sense of time. His heartbeat roared in his ears, and he wondered if this was how he’d die.
No. Not like this. Please.
He didn’t know if there was an afterlife. His boarding school education and his time at university had both included religious studies, but he’d never really thought about whether he…believed.
But now…he prayed. Prayed to every deity he could think of as his life flashed before his eyes. His very boring, very lonely life.
When his head broke through the surface, he spit out a mouthful of brackish water. Fuck. He had to be at least fifty meters from shore, and as he tried to stay afloat, he caught sight of the surfer. The guy was face down, and Eli fought against the current, desperate to reach him.
Flipping the guy over, he battled his panic. The young man couldn’t be more than twenty, and his lips were blue. Eli’s muscles were starting to lock up from the cold. The waters off the far northeastern shore of England weren’t ones you messed with. Or ever tried to swim in without a wetsuit.
He got his arm around the surfer and started kicking with everything he had left. Yet whenever he looked up to sight the beach, they seemed to be farther and farther away.
“No! Not like this! I want to live!” he screamed into the gale.
Despite the ocean’s unrelenting chaos, Eli thought he felt the earth start to shake. A great rumble surrounded him, and the water churned even more violently, the spray stinging his cheeks and making his eyes tear up.
