On the beaches, far away

Hair, dirty brown by nature but now specked with wet clumps of sand, grew more dank as the sea-spray flushed it.
A girl of seventeen, scrubbed face as red as her bloodshot eyes, lay on her side on a barren Devonian beach.
She held a grey piece of folded paper in both hands and kept it from the wind.
Then, drawing it to her chest she began to tear at it, quite calmly, methodically placing a piece into the left breast pocket of her coat and then the right.
Once the paper rectangle was fully dismembered she reached her right hand into the pocket closest her heart and retrieved the scraps.
Thrusting her hand vertically above her face she gazed at the fist she’d made, gazed for fully three seconds and then unlocked it.
Paper whistled away across the beach, dancing for God and catching on dune grass, slipping into sand hollow or flopping onto the tide.
Her left hand now scrabbled greedily for the other half of the paper. Changing position she raised herself slightly with her right arm and swivelled onto both knees to face the crashing shore.
Eyelids slowly closed.
Then, opening her fist slightly as if to make a cup, the girl took up a single slice of paper and, holding out her tongue, received it into her mouth.
This process she observed solemnly until the cup was empty.
And then she leaned backwards so that her pendulous body was pulled backwards onto the gritty beach.
The sand was noticeably wetter now as the tide made its advance towards her. The girl's body had indented the sand like a shell does.
The waves crashed harder and closer, and the spray covered her in a fine mist. Struggling to make herself heard, she opened her dry mouth and wet eyes and sang a song to the tumult.

“As I walked by the winter sea, on the wind you called to me
All along the frosty shore where good men come to moan.

“On the wind you called from sea to say that you belonged to me
And not the blasted patch of sand where they say you have fallen.

“On the beaches, far away,
On the beaches, far away,
On the beaches, far away,
Where they say you have fallen.”

Winter quakes

I went walking through a field of my own choosing and stumbled into a muddy mire.
In the hole with me I found resting three children of a green complexion. They rose from the slop like the phantoms of my youth who terrorised me as a bairn, while I lay sleeping. They spoke in turn. One was named Petandral, his sister was Leanlo, and the third, though faceless, still somehow spoke to me and called itself Gerrent.
Electrified with fear, I scrambled to leave the hole but my hands were like forks when spoons were required. The green ones touched my collar and shoulder and bade me settle. A panic reduces with touch, but the coldness of their form caused ice to burn the skin through my coat.
"It is winter, and we quake," spoke Petandral. "We are sorry," offered his sister. "When the earth is hard and frosted we have little life to give. In the summer we will soar, burning orange across the sky, dropping nectar and rich berries for you. But for now we just survive; breathe in sullen ditches and fallow meadows. Offer us your blood and we will take it."
The voice of Gerrent filtered through my head. "Leanlo looks at your beating heart with relish." Petandral answered my confusion with bold words: "Wait out the winter with us. Awake unto spring and strong new life. The waters will not freeze for long."
I reached out to his chest to push him away. His body, when brushed, crumbled slightly. A howl of death cold seared my hand. New found wildness entered me and I dived at the ditch-wall. A root, uncovered, gave me mooring from which to climb.
As I was raised from the deep rut, chill blades clawed my back but another force, some power, helped me continue to travel upward. As distant vision became possible above the trench edge a freezing fog billowed down from the foothills. A mass murder of crows sat atop each furrowed brow of the field and on every branch of every skeletal tree surrounding.
I ran back toward the River Hoole and, as I staggered on, the great crowd of black wings ascended into a devilish cloud. I turned from their mocking caws and dived over the small stone marker wall and on up the hill into the thick veil of fog.
I wandered for many hours through the gloom. Many times I heard the voice of Leanlo calling to me through the fog, begging me to return to her, but I was never again touched by her grim hand.
The lights of the village eventually cut the sodden air with sanctuary. Now I lie, beneath extra blankets, scared of sleep.
O come spring. Come summer, soon.