She Came to the Sea

She came to the sea.

It was bleak and windy.

It matched her dreary mood.

It’s the end, she thought.

I’m going nowhere else now.

There’s nowhere left to go.

She sank on to the sand,

crouching behind a large rock,

her arms cradling her head.

She didn’t even want to

remember all the ugly things 

which led her to this.

She thought she’d get up

soon, or eventually, and

slowly enter the sea.

A deliberate act, she thought,

must surely count for something –

even if only to herself.

It would be a statement

of a kind, a declaration.

She could make one decision.

Tired from all the walking

she had done to arrive

at this distant, lonely place,

she unintentionally drifted into sleep.

How much later was it

that a voice woke her?

She came to with a start,

bewildered by her surroundings.

A man leaned over her.

She looked up and screamed.

He flinched and rocked back

as if she’d hit him.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said then,

collecting himself and straightening up.

‘Are you all right, miss?’

Written as an exercise in my LitChix monthly offline writers' group. The exercise was to write for a certain length of time to the prompt of this opening sentence. I made up an extra game for myself: five words per line, three lines per verse. I forgot all about this work of fiction for a couple of weeks, then rediscovered it in my files and decided it only needed the addition of one comma to be 'finished'. After further consideration, I also changed one word. Of course the story could have many more chapters, but this unexpected turning-point seems like a good place to conclude. (I don't know what would have happened next. To know that, I would have to continue writing.)