I'm cold. It's...unpleasant, uncomfortable. My body is telling me to find warmth.
My body.
Memories of corporeal form surface from eons ago. Surely this feeling, this cold, is nothing more than an echo, a remembrance of the past. Before the banishment.
And yet...I discover hands. Hands that reach for and find lengths of pebbled gooseflesh.
This is me. I am reborn...
I find a mirror. That's not me, not as I was. I'm someone else now. Well, no, I'm still me in every way that matters, but this body? It's going to take some getting used to.
I feel my toes curl into the soft sand. It's been so long since I felt the warmth of the sun on my skin.
I look around, my eyes straining in the bright light. The rolling ocean is on my right while high rocky cliffs line the shore to my left.
Walking is still difficult. Ahead of me are vultures swooping down from the cliffs. They tear at the carcass of a dolphin beached on the shore. I throw a rock at them and watch them scatter.
Too many bad memories.
I remember these stairs. Endless flights of them, up to the cliff-hanging house. I look up, and it's still there.
So many memories. That night, too much wine. Charles is making a big todo about our breaking up. An open window... No I don't want to remember that bit... Then the long way down. There was seaweed in the shape of a cross, and I decided to hit it right in the middle. -- I wonder if I did.
I loved this beach, I still do.