A place beside the sea

Leela took a notebook to the beach because she had decided it was time to finish something. Her bag held three pens, a bottle of water, and a list of ideas that had seemed better in the kitchen.

Her dog brought a stick.

She sat above the tide line and wrote the date. The dog placed the stick neatly across the page.

“In a minute,” she told him.

The minute stretched. She crossed out the first sentence, then the second. Along the shore, a boy was trying to teach a smaller boy to skim stones. Neither of them was very good at it. They celebrated every splash anyway.

The dog retrieved his stick, considered the situation, and put it on her shoe.

Leela closed the notebook.

They walked to the rocks and back. She threw the stick badly, and the dog ran after it as if she had invented flight. She found a shell with a hole through it. She watched the boys abandon their stones and build a wall for the tide to knock down.

When she returned to her bag, the page was still almost empty. A grain of sand sat in the curve of the date.

This time, she wrote about the stick. Then the stones. Then the way her dog had fallen asleep with his chin on her foot, entirely satisfied with their work.

She did not finish the story that afternoon. But on the walk home, she knew what she wanted to write next.