Sand

“Why does the sea always wash them away?” She was staring down at the castles.

Sky Alton
Writer, Gryffindor

“Time to pack up.”

There was no response so I scrambled over the line of boulders between beach and car park. Sand, already cooling in the evening chill, filled my flip flops as I made my way quickly down the slope. I needn’t have worried: she was just standing their calmly, watching the sunset.
“Hun, it’s time to pack up.”

She didn’t turn, but she held out a hand. I stopped and looked down. She was at the centre of a triple ring of sand castles. Each was perfect, with a pale shell plumb at the centre. They looked like cupcakes for mermaids. Though she claimed she’d grown out of imagining that kind of thing, being a grown up girl of 10 and all.
“Why?”
“Why what, honey?” I stepped very carefully in amongst the little palace town.
“Why does the sea always wash them away?” She was staring down at the castles.
“Because that’s what the sea does,” I said, glancing out at it. The sun was turning the froth to bright gold and the vanishing point was painful to look at.
“But why can’t we ask it not too? Just once in a while, have always not be always?” She slipped a damp, sandy hand into mine and I squeezed it.
“Because the sea doesn’t have to listen to us,” I said eventually, “Sometimes there are just things we can’t change. And things that are always going to pass away, no matter how hard we try to hold onto them.”

I dipped down with my other hand and held up a palm full of sand. It was a little too wet to properly run through my fingers as I’d hoped so I ended up tipping my hand ever so slightly to encourage it. It didn’t matter: she’d not turned to look.
“That’s sad,” she said in a very small voice.
“It is,” I agreed, “but it’s what makes life so wonderful.”
“Really? How?”

I paused.
“And don’t say ‘you’ll find out when you’re older’,” now she was looking at me, chin jutting out.
“Because it means you have to enjoy everything while you can,” I told her, “Because you know that it will slip away. So you hold it close and you get everything out that you can, then you let it go.”

She pondered this for a moment.
“I think it still sounds sad,” she decided. I watched her glance down at the castles, then back out to sea. The light glinted off her hair and I became aware how tall she was getting.
“And I think it’s still time to pack up,” I told her, “Tell you what, I’ll race you.”