Welmer

Below the pale sky on the sands of a gray beach the children played, barefoot and happy in their children’s world, plunging their little hands into the wet sand, chasing the water then running from the waves as they splashed ashore. They took little notice of the man watching them from the grassy bank at the top of the beach, a man with a sad, soft expression on his face. His face was still young, but displayed little of the vitality that accompanies youth and health. He looked on the scene as an outcast, forever banished from the world of children and his eyes betrayed a deep longing and sense of loss.

The man stooped down, trailing his fingers through the sand, then took some up in his hand and let it run through his fingers. He looked up again at the children and at the waves behind them: waves that ceaselessly throw themselves upon the beach, tossing and churning everything before them; that end their long journey across the sea in one final moment of power and action, then slide back exhausted, extinguished, indistinct, into the primal pool from which they emerged.

No better was the fate of the stones that defied the sea, pushing up with determination from the depths of the earth, mighty in their strength and weight, but worn down and ground to sand by the tireless waters. Thus was the terrible beauty of the beach formed from the enduring struggle of the elements: a monument to a never-ending war and the futility of its combatants’ efforts.

This thought the man as he listened to the dull roar of the sea that was the sound of inevitability, that was the battle-din hovering over all creatures and all things. But there before him were little boys and girls, laughing and trampling the sand under their bare feet, daring the waves, breathing the mist and twirling in the breeze, and he wondered at it, that all these mighty things belonged to them.