Written by Chelsea Marie Hicks
At first she only tasted the faint smell of salt seasoning the air, unaccompanied by any sight or sound. Her view was enveloped in a darkness so consuming she was momentarily convinced that salt had forever been painted black–that her memory of its whiteness was flawed, likely misinformed by a strange dream, a wrong deja vu. She could feel the rough grains of salt between her toes and would only realize what rubbed her skin when the light bent open her eyes. There brown, grey sand slipped through her and the sensory flood swelled as sea foam left its fading bubbles clinging above her ankle; limbs instantly washed over by the wet chill of an unforgiving sea, its crashing whistle ringing in her ears; the bath of warm sunlight dripping from her taut white bodice.
This was just like a day at the beach except that it wasn’t. Wherever Claire had just awoken was nowhere within the realm of the familiar despite the seething sensation that she’d done this all before.
