The grass was high and whipped about by the tugging of a salty breeze. Walking slowly, Cellen left the trees, turning his head to catch the sights, smells, and sounds of this new country. Ahead he heard the muffled crash and sighs of breaking waves. The sound reminded him of some great creature breathing or perhaps bellowing out a powerful roar. A bird sailed above him, its underside a dazzling white against the dark-blue sky, its wings constantly shifting to ride the wind that sent it slipping sideways. As the gull winged overhead, Cellen exhaled; wishing that he too could experience such a sensation.
Why was it that flight seemed to be an exclusive ability granted to the avian? He could only imagine the sensation of the wind caressing against his face, whispering into his ears while mingling with the cirrus swept clouds and dancing alongside daylight. Perhaps one day, he mused to himself.
He walked until the wind was slathering across his face and the grass thinned beneath his feet. The meadow ended, tumbling away into sheer cliffs with waves pounding at their base. At first, Cellen was tempted to venture closer, but night was coming and he could see no way to climb down. Looking down into the frothing surf below, he could feel himself grow dizzy, then gazed outward. Before him lay a shimmering expanse of silver, where the setting sun's light danced and flickered. At first it appeared to be another land, a vast plain spreading toward the horizon with sunlight painting new trails to lead him onward. The shimmer became the rippling of water, of traveling waves that crested toward him.
The first time he'd lay eyes upon the great water was from a distance, he had thought that it was only an enormous lake. But now, standing on the cliff and sweeping the horizon for a glimpse of a distant shoreline, he sensed that even if he would endure the everyday adventure for a lifetime, he would never be able to travel to its other side. Many a closed circle of pawprints had he left around the lake near where his 'pack' resided, but the pawprints here would always remain open-- the undertaking to venture to the other shoreline, wherever it lay, was too great, if not impossible.
He gazed out over the water, watching its hues and texture change with the sinking sun. He felt the same awe that touched him when he sat gazing into the openness of the skies. Both were things he knew he would never understand, but he sensed they came from the same source and bore the same underlying power. It was a feeling that made him wish to stay quiet while evening came to this new and almost sacred place.
At last the feeling faded into simple loneliness, and the wind began to bite. Cellen got up from the place where he had settled and stretched. He padded back through the grass to the edge of the forest and found shelter in a niche between two logs that had fallen across one another. There, he silently faded into sleeps grasp.
When Cellen awoke at dawn, the sound of breakers rang audibly within his ears and the sunlight brilliantly rained down. The shoreline country now had an exuberant quality that infected the lone traveler. Never had he seized the opportunity to travel to the fjords-- although the land was certainly not like the thick forested jungles which he had so well acquainted himself with, the fjords, the ocean shoreline, was starting to become an ideal hideaway; a secret place which he could retreat to when the madness of the world was too intoxicating. He turned from the westward path he'd been on to a northward course that led up the coast. He hoped to find a way down to the waters edge, but the cliffs remained too foreboding. Cellen trotted along windblown scarps. He crossed wild clifftop meadows and paced over the flanks of hills whose slopes were cut off by the sheer drop of the sea cliffs. He paused to rest in groves of coast pines where trees leaned in the way of where the prevailing wind hailed from, their shapes stunted and twisted by both spray and storm.
The stark cliffs had given way to friendlier country that hosted river valleys and winding estuaries. As Cellen descended, he saw sandy shores and mudflats. Droves of stilt-legged shorebirds rested or waded there, probing the bottoms with their bills.
Some of those shorebirds were so odd that he halted to gaze at them. He knew that the long, sharp bills of herons and the broad ones of ducks, but here he saw beaks that curved up, down, or even sideways. The shorebirds looked so clumsy that the temptation to stalk one was ever so present. But, for now, he would leave them to their own agenda.
He had already noticed several estuaries and inlets that cut into the coastline, but most that he sampled were too salty or brackish, even as he ventured upstream. It was a ways deeper where he finally found a creek that fed into a lagoon. Though the lagoon itself was briny and mixed with sea water, the stream itself, when he tasted it, was fresh. He followed the creek inland until he came to its source. The base of a second tier of cliffs set far back from the ocean, a spring ran steadily from a cleft in blue-grey stone, collecting in a pool beneath. Shaded by the rock walls and watered by the spring, trees grew at the base of the cliffs with open meadows adorning beyond. seepage from the spring moistened the ground, and fresh grass sprouted amid the dappled patterns and shade.
Cellen drank from the pool, then stood on its margin, letting the feel of the place seep into him.
There was a calming peace that lingered here that felt surreal, mystical almost. Perhaps it was the potent concoction that nature seemed to engineer when it melded both the ocean and the recesses of a quaint meadow together in the same vicinity. Or maybe it was due to the solitude and tranquility which abounded here-- no interruptions and no distractions.
This would be the perfect place where I could tell Reisx---
WIth that thought, Cellen set off on his journey back to his mate. He had to bring her here-- the peace would fill the voided wounds that left gapes within her heart and the setting would help to manifest his true feelings and convey that which he had been longing to say to her.
