Crockett's Beach

She drove through the night,
arriving at the edge of the sea at dawn.
She opened the car door
and stepped out onto the smooth stones.
She stretched,
letting her joints loosen up again
after the long drive,
and turned her gaze fully on the scene before her.
The sun was just growing visible at the edge of the horizon,
the rich purples and deep pinks melting from the sky to the water
or maybe the other way around,
she wasn't sure.
The only sounds in the stillness
were the ticking of her cooling engine
and the soft liquid rumble of waves lapping against rounded stones,
jostling against each other like marbles in a bag.
She grabbed her backpack and moved away from the car,
wanting nothing to interfere with the sound of the ocean's rhythm.
She wandered down the beach,
the sun and the water on her left,
the rocks leading up to a fringe of jagged pines on her right.
She walked until she couldn't see that house
at the end of the causeway behind her,
or the lighthouse
or her car.
The sun crept higher,
muting the vibrant colors,
but wasn't all the way up yet.
She sat down on the stones,
wiggling a little to settle into them,
and unzipped the backpack.
She smiled as she imagined someone saying,
It's a bit early for a drink, isn't it?
A bit late, as far as she was concerned.
She uncorked the bottle and took a long swig.
The waves were relentlessly pressing inland by the tidal forces,
for a few more hours at least,
and then they would slide back out,
each wave shrinking a little further back than the last,
until the bare sand was revealed between the rocks and the water line.
She let the bourbon burn down her throat
and looked at the islands smudged across the water at random intervals
from one horizon to another.
She wondered which was the one.
Which island was where she would need to go to finish this journey.
She knew the closest one was Ash,
and that past the scope of the naked eye,
straight south of here was Metinic.
But in between, somehwere out in that endless sea,
was her destination.
She took another drink and let out a long sigh.
She would have to head back into town and find someone to ferry her out there.
12 hours of driving,
and she still hadn't figured out whether or not it would play to her advantage
to mention her brother's name.
He was such a trouble maker, and now he was in so much trouble.
But he also had that smile that seemed to magically make everyone forgive him;
that laugh,
and the thrilling ability to make everyone around him laugh
and to sometimes even feel like they had helped come up with the joke.
She smiled that crooked smile they almost shared,
shook her head a little,
and took another long drink.
Fuck.
This was going to be an even longer day than the last.