The morning was bright, the tide low, and a gentle breeze stirred along the shoreline. Gulls strutted the water’s edge and my heart soared as patterns of foam danced up the sand while pelicans glided just above the sunlit waves.
I splashed through the pools of salt-water left along the beach from the receding tide. Some were slim and shallow. Others wide and deep. Various shapes and sizes. Each one cut off from the ocean, left to evaporate as the sun rose and the tide shrunk back to the sea.
A glance ahead revealed two shapes lying just inside the ridges of the next tidal pool—starfish—trapped from their retreat along the ocean’s floor. Their source of existence ebbed with each taunting ripple of the next swell. They would bake in the heat of the rising sun and drying sand.