As They Sat on the Beach
These stories were originally posted to Twitter in mid-2021. The still have a place in my heart.
The doll lay on the beach, watching the waves. They went in and out so relaxing, just like how all her thoughts flowed out of her head when her witch looked at her; and the cry of seagulls above was oddly nostalgic, though she could not think of why.
The witch sat on the beach, her arm possessively resting on the closed hamper of food next to her. Across the beach towel a delegation of seagulls balefully regarded her; several more circled the doll, their eyes full of menace.
“Okay, final offer,” the witch said. “Ten sandwiches—the good stuff—and all our bags of chips. But you have to leave us alone. No pecking out her eyes or anything like that.”
The seagulls squawked in raucous agreement, and the witch slid the hamper over to them.
The witch and her doll sat on the beach; the witch whittling, the doll leaning back against a driftwood log, watching the sun go down through crystal eyes.
“Do you ever wonder,” asked the witch, “where all this wood comes from?”
The doll looked at the witch, head tilted.
“No, I mean—we use it for so many things; I carve it into masks, and dolls, and tools … and I don’t have the slightest idea where it comes from, whether it’s storm-swept trees or the decaying body of some old god or gifts left by seagulls.”
The doll laughed, her voice entirely unlike a splinter, free even of the subtle creaks that gave the witch’s voice so much of its charm.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “So why would I wonder about it? Knowing wouldn’t change anything. We are what we are.”
“I guess you’re right,” the witch said, and sighed. “Still, I would like to know, someday, where my body came from.”
The doll, unsure how to reply, pulled the witch into a hug; and it must have been the right thing to do, because the witch hugged her back so very tightly.
“Do you ever think”, asked the witch, “about how things were before the waves?”
The doll, ears full of salt wind, had to ask the witch to repeat herself several times; but when she had heard, she sat lost in thought, her hand trailing in the water swirling around their raft.
“You know,” replied the doll, her mellifluous voice only slightly strained by sun and salt, “I do all the time, yet I can hardly recall a thing.”
“Odd.”
“It’s all lost in the blur of endless moments,” she said, and paused for a long moment. “Except when we met, of course.”
The witch’s hand found hers, futile paddling forgotten as long wooden fingers closed around the doll’s soft digits.
“That was a good day,” said the witch.
The doll laughed, her bitterness not fully dulled even the passage of time and all the ways she’d changed since.
“No it wasn’t! I’d just been fired. I was thinking about filling my pockets with rocks and walking into the sea. It was an absolutely horrible day.”
The witch coughed. “Yes, well. I’m glad you stumbled over me before that.”
“Yeah. That part was nice. Scary, but nice.”
There was a long pause, the two thinking their own thoughts and staring off into their own demons; the witch started trying to paddle again and the doll dangled her feet in the water to fascinate a passing flock of fish.
“If you could go back there”, asked the witch, “do you think you would?”
The doll’s reply came instantly and definitively, accompanied by a Look: “No. You know I wouldn’t.”
“I do,” said the witch. “But sometimes it’s nice to be reassured that this is better.”
“Anything is better than that. Besides, it’s not like this is your fault.”
The witch coughed, and turned to look away from her doll.
“… it’s not your fault, right? Because if you broke the world we’re going to need to have a serious talk.”