Word count: 977

Written for:

Hogwarts Transfiguration Assignment - Task: Have a non-living object as the main "character" of your story.

Hogwarts April Event Spring Themed Bingo - 40: (word) Alive

Hogwarts Chocolate Frog Card Club - Challenge: A sea or beach must be incorporated into your story.

Sea Breeze

I'm facing the sky, stuck gazing at the spot where the sun would be if it was about, but there is a mass of clouds above that leave a chill in the air. The ocean breeze accentuates this and I'm sure the temperature will drop even more in the evening. It's quiet on the beach where I rest, listening, with nothing but the squawk of seagulls and the sound of the waves to interrupt my thoughts.

I could not move if I tried. Bits and pieces of discontentment well up in my mind now and then, but I've long since accepted that this is my life. -I say life. All the life left me long ago, so now only the tides decide where I belong.

I'm free-flowing, if you pardon the pun - I wander the shore and go where the winds take me. Water scrapes into my sides and I think that someday I shall break away into nothing, just float away in fragments smaller than a grain of sand. Lighter than the faintest ocean breeze. Invisible to the human eye.

Do you complain?

oOo

They walk by daily, although I miss them on some cycles of the sun and moon. Hands clutching hands, heads looking everywhere around but somehow always at each other. They are two pieces always walking in the same rhythm, but unintentionally, like they have just begun. I sense their youth, and it burns into my thoughts that they still feel, while I do not.

I move on. Sun and moon, day and night, it is all the same, and always there is the pair, walking by me in silence.

I sense the waves crashing, the gulls calling, the planes soaring overhead, but all I know of them is that they walk, and they return to the cottage on the hill. I see it sometimes.

I see them too, alike in their everlasting life, though never as lasting as mine. The days blur together until the light fades to dark in mere minutes. I could not care about the ways of the now-living, yet I find myself curious and wanting to know their secrets. It burns inside of me, this longing desire to know, and feel, and be.

oOo

Then it is different. The sky darkens, but not due to night, or a storm. A shadow comes upon the land, darkness that is nearly tangible. I rest in shadow, wait in shadow for the day to come. Because I know intrinsically that something must happen to end this eternal darkness.

I thought it was quiet, but now I know what real quiet is: when the walls of silence are large enough to choke out the sound of the ocean.

I cannot look away, having no eyes to see or feet to lead me to safety, so I will myself to ignore the coming storm. I brace myself. It isn't enough.

oOo

If there is one thing I could keep from my mortal life, it is the ability to choose. I wish I could choose to move myself away, or really, to hide. I wish I could speak - not in the tongue of the two that walked, for that remains a mystery - but in my own language. The language of the sea, where one needn't explain any more than one likes. I wish I could choose to feel, just for a moment, the satisfaction of breathing out in relief when things change for the better.

I have never breathed before, just seen the rise and fall of the people's chests as they walk together across the sand.

I wonder if it feels like a loss, or a gain.

oOo

The people have returned from their absence, which had previously kept them away from the shore. I lost count of the days, and it wasn't much, I know, but the quick passage of time I once knew turned into endless hours of waiting. I forgot how much I depended on them until they were gone.

But now I see what I have never seen before: their faces, which were once blurred like the rest of them, in bright color and definition. I see hair framing a face in silvery gold, like the sun scattering on sand. I see scratches marring otherwise perfectly smooth skin. They are not new, but the people no longer walk in silence, hands held, empty in love. They see each other like I see them. They are awake.

oOo

The sky lightens, slowly but surely drawing the sun out of hiding and the world back to life. The people walk for longer, passing by me many times. It is the last of these when one turns to the other, their young faces drawn in lines and creases. They embrace, pressing close together, lips meeting softly again and again.

It is sweet, the fleeting touches that bring me back to today. One day in millions. It is likely that I will see many more - if not millions, than scores, surely. Time does not count the days of the dead, but time does not inhibit my soul. Time does not see that an empty shell can see the world. Time cannot conceive that any part of it wishes to be alive. But what does time know of me?

I am separated from the humans, who stand entwined, while I am alone and cold. They break apart, and I am glad for their joy in this ending time of despair, but a part of me is colder and wishes that they were not so. Or that I could be there instead of them.

The moment passes.

As the people leave, they strike my side, and I land facing down into the cool sand, the sun blocked out completely.

If there is one thing I could wish for, it is to see the light again.