Ripples 1 by KimB

[Editor's Note: Ripples is a serial story.
The author makes no guarantees as to completing the serial.
Publication dates are located in the left side menu.]

01 The Beachcomber

The sun was just over the horizon.

The morning breeze was still cool and damp from the long night but the morning sun would soon change that. The water was at low tide; the best time. The sand was smooth and unmarked; there would still be some hours before the beach became crowded.

Like many mornings, she walked along the smooth sand, the soft tide spilling over her feet with its cold chill only to retreat away for a moment's respite and then flow back again, the cold a reminder of the night's hegemony.

Her eyes wandering from side to side, she scanned the waterline. You never knew what you would find. Old bottles, sea shells, trash bags, broken hunks of wood from rotting piers or waterlogged branches washed down from far off mountains and streams into the swirling waters. Battered by wave and sand into smoothed shapes, that dried again, made interesting and sometimes sellable items. People would buy the half decayed branches if they came from the shore.

There wasn't a lot on the shore this day. Perhaps a bit farther on, she thought. Perhaps the next wavelets would reveal the day's treasure. The tide gave and took away again. A race in slow motion.

There. She spotted it. She moved quickly to the twist of wood peeking up from the sand just above the damp line. Reaching down, she pulled it free. A nice trophy for the morning's walk.

She spotted something else there too. No longer hidden by the wood, it glinted in the morning light. She new what it was; the shape man made, the metallic edges visible, she picked it up and brushed bits of clinging sand from the surface.

Someone had lost their phone; now she had found it.

She looked around; the beach was empty still.