The rain smells different by the sea. There’s more salt in the air, more sand and surf than grass and tree. When it rains, the roar of the ocean drowns out the roar of the clouds, and when it rains, it splatters across the waves, water into water and begun again.
She missed the woods and the smell of the earth after it rained. Missed the way the rain would drip from the trees like tears to stain her cheeks. And she missed how soft the earth felt after a storm, how lush and verdant and alive it felt after a hard downpour.
The ocean had its beauties but it would never be the same as home.
She ran to the ocean when the woods drove her out. She ran with the smell of the rain filling her lungs and lingering on her tongue, when the leaves were still wet and dripping, and her own tears were spilling out and over. She ran when the woods betrayed her and rejected her. And she ran to the only place where she was safe from the anger of the earth, to the only place where the trees held no power over her.
She was safe here, where salt and earth meet sky and sea. Safe among the shoreline and the cliffs and the rock face. The horizon is nothing but a hazy line in the distance and the ocean stretches out endlessly before her. Endless as the future ahead of her. Deep as the past that was drowned in it.
But still she missed it, in the end.
- Excerpt of a story I will never finish...
:) Kathryn