Weather Forecast: Showers -> Sunny

Naeun slides a finger through the sand; it’s a slick cut through but the tip of her finger feels a burning cold sensation. And without words, the tears fall again.

Perhaps it was inevitable, but she wished for a little more time to bid goodbye. (Almost amusing, since he was the one who decided to leave.) Her feet, pressed against the rough surface of the rock, shift haphazardly around, as if anxiously looking for a place to settle. The crashing dark waves at night seemed bitter, like the liquid rising up every now and then.

Tightly grasped in her right hand is a crumpled piece of paper from -- how long ago was it? six? seven years? The howling wind mercilessly hits her, threatening to tear her away from even this last piece of memory she had of him.

Seawater droplets begin to splash onto her pale face. A few fall onto her lips. Consciously or not, her tongue sticks out and she tastes it -- it stings more than she imagined. She’d liked savoury flavours; after all, that was what he cooked the best. But maybe she’d left it out from her diet for too long after he’d left.

The wind only gets stronger and her hair becomes awfully far from decent. She hadn’t planned to miss him tonight; all she wanted to do was to look at the sea and feel the dead night breeze. Nothing’s planned, but that’s also the beauty the spontaneity. At times destructive, and other times surprisingly rewarding.

From a distance, there are sounds of chattering and laughter, and she can almost imagine a group of friends with tired but joyful faces. At that, she manages a little smile.

At some point, she loses grip of the paper (she might have been dozing off) and it falls off, onto somewhere in that large curtain of pitch darkness. She doesn’t realize this, and strangely, falls into a sound sleep regardless of the brewing storm. Maybe it’s true that thoughts get quieter in a larger mess. In comparison to the vastness of the ocean, her emotions are nothing, are they? Nothing but a speck of blue.

In another space, she hands over a crumpled piece of paper to someone whose face is unseen. Her hands are then enveloped in warmth even though the surroundings are freezing. She realizes her hair is wet, and then shakes her head hard to rid it of water droplets. Strangely, they’re blue, so blue. Blue dots on the ground. But they dissolve away.

Before her is a cloak of bright orange. She squints, and then sees that it’s just light falling on her eyelids. She flutters them open, and the sea is now blue -- a calm, light shade of blue. The sounds of chattering and laughter (and life, in general) have gotten closer. The fishermen, probably. She spots a small speck of white floating on the water surface a distance away. Somehow, she doesn’t feel pain from losing it anymore, but relief. Is that what a good sleep out in the nature does? Just then, she realizes that she’s drenched -- was drenched. So I survived a storm while I was asleep. She looks up at the clear sky and smiles.

“Young lady!” a man calls from behind her, “You cannot sit there; it’s dangerous. You’ll get wet when the shoreline rises--”

“You’re already drenched! See, what did I tell you? Young people these days just don’t listen. What we say is from experience…”

She giggles sheepishly the whole way, but she’s glad she’s back. She’s back to life. Because life isn’t a never-ending sorrow, but where skies darken and pour, there it’ll clear up again, and shine once more.

A/N: Dedicated to Yanie. An old drabble as part of Christmas gifts to my friends back in 2014. This was written when I was half-asleep and I thought it came out pretty interesting, a little different from my usual style? But I like it for that, haha.

A belated Merry Christmas to you. I hope you had a good time, or at least just some well-deserved rest, this Christmas break.