The Sands Of Time

• Aimee Massey, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2018

Wynny sat on the rocks by the shore listening to the waves gently breaking onto the sand, her mind at rest. The ocean had that effect on her, it rushed through her soul and pounded in her heart, as Grammy had used to say. She'd often told the story of Wynny's parents, sea nymphs apparently. Wynny had believed those stories then, but wouldn't anyone four years old, who had just mysteriously lost their parents? Turns out, stories are much better then reality, they mask the truth, hide it from you to keep you safe. Her Grammy had just loved her, that was all, but still 11 years on now, she felt like she needed her parents more than ever.

She slid off the rock, wrapping her cloak around her and wandered towards the breaking waves, just a small girl with wild tawny curls and startling emerald eyes, faced with the ocean's wrath. She knelt down, dampening her cloak and traced her pale, fragile finger against the sand, almost timidly. It sounded silly, but just one more time she wanted to do the thing she'd cherished as a child. Now that Grammy was gone she felt lost, this was her last refuge.

Carefully in spiral-like handwriting, she wrote the word "Hello" on the shore and watched as an icy cold wave broke over it. Her heart ached as a memory flooded through her, a memory so potent and vivid it took her back, back to laughing and singing, back to bonfires and lanterns and spicey aromas. Back to the festival, to her family and herself when she was just a small child, innocent and unknowing. Back before the fires, before her world, as she knew it, crumbled around her leaving rubble at her feet.

She snapped out of her daze and shakily brushed away the lone tear on her cheek. The past is a dangerous place, you can get lost in all its twists and turns and lose yourself in the process. Wynny rose defiantly, she wouldn't lose herself, she would stay strong, she would do the thing she came here to do, she had to. And then? And then she would leave. She wrapped her cloak around her and walked away from the waves, like war horses hooves pounding unmercifully on the sand and battering her heart, as she walked faster, leaving the past behind her at the will of the ocean's currents.