Brine and Bloom: Chapter 8
The Tide Was More Familiar Than Any Face
The dock was quieter than the streets behind her, though not still. The waves moved with slow rhythm, lapping against the pilings in time with the cry of gulls and the shuffle of boots on wood. The wind had picked up again. It always did by the shore.
She stood for a while at the edge, not quite waiting, just existing, a breath above the water. The salt was stronger here, and familiar. Not like the heavy brine of the open sea, nor the softened hush of the lighthouse air. This was busier salt, bolder, carried in on wind that had traveled and worked. Her lungs ached a little when she breathed it in, and she didn’t mind.
The boat was moored without urgency. A modest vessel, stained from years of crossings, patched in places where salt had gnawed and time had worn through. Nets curled like sleeping things on the deck. A tin bucket rolled with each tilt of the hull. She could hear a flag snapping, its rope ticking against the mast.
She climbed aboard without instruction. There were others, silent, weather-worn, eyes fixed ahead. No tickets, no papers, no introductions. Just movement. She found a place by the rail and gripped it, more for thought than balance.
As the boat pulled from the harbor, she did not look back. The town was already softening behind them, roofs fading into the misted cliffs. A gull cried once, and then another. Her boots were still damp from the woodland, and the soles left ghost prints on the deck’s salt-whitened boards.
This journey would not echo the one that first brought her. No train tracing its trembling way north. No roadside trees blurred by the windows of a bus. No wide-eyed approach to a place unknown. This path was smaller, quieter. Measured not by discovery but by return.
She knew where she was going.
The sea, this time, did not pull her forward, but accompanied her gently toward something already waiting. Not the lighthouse. Not the blackberries or the salted hearth.
The boat hummed low beneath her feet, steady and sure. And she let the wind lift her hair, let the salt rest on her skin, let the waves speak the names she didn’t say aloud.