(ellipsis) revisitted

I enjoyed the way the original segment came out, but never had the brains or balls to try expanding on it. I'm going to give it a shot. I'm at work now, so I can't do any more on it today.

The zeal of the morning shine struck and carried beneath the bloody clouds, tearing shadows across the whispered landscape. The sand shown orange as I slithered and slicked beside my towering shadow, and the waves sang watch and show. The girl slid from the salty lifeguard shack behind me, padding her way –surely, padding—across the pouring sand. The salt blew her hair into my face and my nose filled my head with the flowers growing in the sand as her hand pressed into mine, fingers binding and tangling there on the sand.

She said something then, notes lilting and tilting me into her, and she held me and I could only smile as I fell into her. More words, soft, soothing, lolling and lulling reverberating through me, wrapping around me and rolling with me, soft, warm. Perfect.

And somewhere in the distance a flag clanged against its pole as a breeze tugged it awake to stand and greet us. The click, sharp snap, crisp through the air as though the world was silent but for the pointed noise rising above the low rushing wash and the hissing retreating show that muffles the silence of every beach.

And her hand squeezed again like a click, like a tug away from the distance that had captured my eyes and her words rolled over me like a smile, like thunder or a heavy blanket that pushes down on the chest and arms. A sense. An overwhelming tide of gasping breath and pounding heart. An undercurrent towing me down and down and away with her winter-pond eyes rushing into my lungs, her fingers holding gentle, holding me in the tumble under her smile.

She looked away, her eyes breaking away, riding back along the horizon, drawn by something I could not see. I could breathe again, and the wind blew her hair back across her shoulders.

The cold of the vanquished night held refuge within the sand, and fastened to our feet as we stirred upon the roof of its abode. She shivered slightly, her skin tightening across her bare arms that lightly brushed like a winter breeze upon my own skin. I quivered, despite me, and I hid the delight as she grasped to the warmth of my core.

We stood a moment and gathered bodies with arms. I breathed warm life into her hair and held it against the Pacific chill. My neck pressed against hers, a warm tributary, passing and sharing with each pairing pulse. Blood surged and crashed in my ears, prelude, countermelody to the rhythmic roar of the sea, rising and pushing to a crescendo of sonic static, drowning deafening, fuzz thick and slow as sand.

I said something to her, and she looked into me. I doubt she heard, but it did not matter. She wrapped warm arms around my neck and burrowed fingers into my hair and I leaned in and kissed her and I felt her smile briefly against my lips before we mixed, gathered and twisted there on the sand

The sun did its work too slowly to save us that morning, and we were forced to gather and carry ourselves to her hulking old truck, conceding to the vestiges of ocean cold and beating a gritty retreat.

“You’re covered in sand,” I told her.

“Imagine that,” she said, brushing absently at the damp.

It was the first we’d spoken since arriving in the twilight and submerging ourselves in the ocean’s song. Her voice was smooth as a smile, hiding a laugh and singing the glint that lived in her eyes.