Sea of Tears

Moments passed by with only a faint ghost of the breeze. Waves licked the shore softly, barely a ripple to the sea. The night was still. Across the beach there lay thousands of tiny purple shells, scattered by the anger of a recent storm. The moon hung in the sky, a mournful glow casting pale light on a small child crouched in the dunes.
Surrounding her were slim stalks of spiky grass, swaying lightly in the girl’s heavy breath. The sun was waiting for her, peeking over the long horizon. But she sat still. The tattered cloth draped around her shoulders brought little warmth, made colder by the salt air gently touching her back with its long frozen fingers. A shiver rushed up the poor girl’s spine, making her entire body stiffen. A puff of hot air issued from her mouth, the silvery steam writhing and twisting up into the sky, slowly fading away.
In a moment of unbearable silence, the child extended one tiny hand, followed by a slender white arm. The skin was so see-through that you could look past the white to see thin blue veins, running up and down her body in a minature system of rivers. Her little rosy fingers gradually grazed the surface of the sand, quickly drawing back at the sudden impact of the rough texture. Trying again with caution, the little girl steadily moved her index finger around in the cool sand to form abstract shapes and wavy lines, creating a pattern of wildly distorted figures. The pictures were vague because of the shallow marks and shifting sand. Around them in a final movement, she drew a wide oval around her picture, leaning back to view the finished work.
After a moment of silent contemplation, the small child rose to her feet, and hesitantly stumbled over the uneven ground going down to the shoreline. The tiny shells crunched underneath her delicate feet, yet her round face showed no signs of pain. Behind her, in a long winding path, was a trail of blood, turned copper in the sand. There was no limp in her stride, no pause in her speed, the young girl just made her way to the water as quickly as her numb legs could go.
At the waters edge, she finally stopped moving. Her eyes were focused on the retreating tide, mezmerized by its hypnotic rhythm. The waves seemed to be pulling her inward, her body tilting slightly forward. The girl abruptly turned her face to the right, staring yearningly at a distant place. Without ever taking her eyes away from the town she once loved so dearly, she stepped into the water. The cold temperature put her body in shock, but she willed her half-frozen limbs to move.
The sea got increasingly deeper with each yard, until the shallow shelves that the tide had formed ended, the next step bringing forth a dramatic drop to the bottom. Her clear grey eyes, still fixed in the distance, filled with a mixture of fear, longing, and tears, blurring the image of her home. Tears dropped to the surface of the water, now up to her chin. Both of the salty liquids mingled. An icy chill took over her skin, filling her heart with the climactic sense of the end.
Young as she was, she knew that she had to do it. She extended her right foot, leaned forward, and with a sharp intake of breathe, the sea swallowed her up. The image of the only love she had ever known remained as the last glimpse she had in this world.