The ocean at this time of day always seemed bigger to Kate, bigger than it really was, although of course, it was big, at any rate.  But in the early mornings, the sea seemed so awfully bigger than it did later in the day. Maybe it was that there was nothing against the ocean at this time of day. No hubbub of Banderas Bay tourists, Mexican vendors, sun-worshippers and castle-builders, sailors and fishermen.  Maybe it was that the ocean could be herself, after a nighttime of darkness.

Kate watched the waves as they tumbled carelessly toward her.  She wandered down the rocks to the sand. In her nightly deposits, the sea had left a myriad of treasures.  Pieces of rock, nondescript carcasses, hurt seashells.  Kate remembered wandering the beach in the Bahamas, always looking ahead of her toes for the perfect shell, and she remembered picking one up, and seeing something fuzzy inside, and hurling it out to sea in a great gasp of fear.  And David with a look of horror on his face, running into the ocean to catch it before it sank, and succeeding, and handing it to her.  She’d taken the shell tentatively, not quite understanding, and he’d encouraged her.  In it, inside black velvet, a gold locket with a picture of each of them.  Then he’d asked her to marry him, and she was so discombobulated that she’d said yes, of course.

Kate walked on with her eyes in front of her toes, still searching for the perfect shell. It was a habit, in a way. One caught her eye, and she bent all the way down to look before she picked it up.  It was broken like most shells in this part of Mexico, yet the inside glimmered a thousand colours, as it caught the morning sun.  She stood a while and held the broken shell, stroking its smooth surface, feeling its damp coolness.  She could feel the other side too, its dull rough edges, battered and bashed.

People were wandering onto the beach then, some with a cup of morning coffee in hand.  An odd jogger ran by, tossing a wave from the hip or thrusting a chin in upward nod.  Visual disturbances on the radar, Kate thought. She looked out at the sea.  A small boat with deep-sea apparatus was on its way in to haul off a load of tourists in search of fishy reward. Back where she’d come from, up on the rocks, the waves crashed relentlessly.

Kate remembered the fevers she used to get when she’d been sick, how things around her had felt bigger and closer than they really were, and how she’d quite liked the feeling, it being so unfamiliar and odd. Indescribable, yet tangible.  And the feeling that she too was bigger than she was, especially her head, or her hands if she’d tried to use them as if bloated with sea water, or steeped like a swollen tea bag.  The ocean had a way of doing that to her, seeping into her pores.

And all this time while the sun was creeping over the mountaintop, she’d been thinking, really, of Daniel because she couldn’t help it. The sea brought him to her, and she pushed him away, but he kept arriving on the crest of the waves, so that she’d look out to the swells at sea and wonder if he possibly was out there, because how could she be so overwhelmed by him otherwise?

And it wasn’t just the sea that made her remember him.  She found him waiting in every breath of salty air.  Suddenly, he was inside her, and she could feel his fingers gently stroking her heart. There he was like Thumbelina, between the wrinkled red petals of the hibiscus plant that sat beside her table at the café.  And when sunset came, Daniel was there then too, sitting behind her looking out to sea, she between his legs, her head resting on his chest, his chin on her hair, his arms bracing them both. The sea had its way with her, she thought.  Out there on the

The sea had its way with her, she thought.  Out there on the horizon heaven and earth seemed to meet, and with gentle strength, press into one another, balanced.  Kate deeply breathed the sweet salt of the ocean.