With browning legs curled under, dusted with sand like flour on bread, I sit close to the lapping waves. They feel warm and cool, like tea that's been forgotten and returned to. My fingers wiggle in the water, in these lips of the ocean as she sings. In this place I will remain until the tide is lower, scooping the sand that runs like cold lava through my star-fish fingers and onto the dry beach. With each handful I twist my body as if dancing in a chair, gazing at the falling sand. Below it rises a drip-castle, a sandcastle that looks for all the world like a melted candle. By sunset there will be a long skinny line of them following the ocean as she chases the moon.
The sandcastle deepens in colour toward the rock it rests upon. Salt water trickles over the granite, painting dark rivers which quickly dry. I imagine that the sand is sweet caramel, that the grains are golden sugar, and that this is my birthday cake. It's the moment I savour each year, the intense expectation of joy. Cake is just cake, sand is just sand, either way the moment is steeped in love and I let my mind dwell there.
A sandcastle forms beneath my palms. At first I feel the sand moving with the seawater, flowing home to the waves nearby, then it firms and stays. It goes like that for a while, loosing some but gaining more. I sit there, smile as soft as the sand and as warm as the sun. It's gonna take time, but I got all day. My heart beats and the waves pulse as if they are one, beckoning my mind to join them in bliss. And for that sweet unmeasured time, that's exactly what happens. In that moment I am lost and found, each feeling needing the other.
As sand slides from the bucket, Sam watches. For that tiny moment the waves hush and the birds hold their chattering. He feels as if the beach is a photograph and he's eternal within it. He dreams of the inner life of his castle, the one formed at his touch. Music bounces from within, notes dancing, bringing the people to movement. Sam sees a million sunrises and the starry nights that follow, each as crisp and perfect as the last. And then the moment blossoms into a fresh one.
The corner of the castle crumbles as if it were a raisin cake at the hand of a hungry child. Sam laughs. Now the sandcastle has character; she is free of the walls that made her, breathing in the seaside air. He imagines her as Cair Paravel, the castle of the Narnian Kings and Queens. Soon he is creating a story, one of bravery and love, one of strong open hearts.