Nothing New Under the Sun
Out on the bright, reflective sand, a beach side hut stood in its own stark shadow, weathered poles and roof of dried palm leaves, gleaming in the sun. Really only an open shelter with a pair of walls against prevailing winds, its brown-grey color was evidence it could exist in the sunny present, or at night or with clouds or rain. Sand, randomly scuffed in heaps at the pole bases, could also wait for the disturbance of another tent, which would arrive shortly and be gone again.
An open blue sea lapped down the beach slope. Palms caught an even breeze in the open sky behind, almost with mocking circular crowns of palm fronds and the same gleam as the thatch roof. And a low line of distant, hazy mountains, gradually shifting shape over millennia, ran from inland out to a point in the water.
The conceit of a long wait seemed almost equally insolent.
And as if to show this by further evidence, the waves continued to lap; the sun shone; the palms waved on, until the sun dropped to a lower angle, to afternoon, sunset and a gleam to waning light
By then, the sea had advanced, lapping further up the beach, incrementally, hour by hour and then, hour after hour, receding under starlight.
The shelter, the palms, the mountains were prepared to wait out the rising and dropping tide until first light and, later, the reappearance of the sun behind the leaves and the recession of the water line, now scuttling around at the bottom of a wide slope of wet sand and finding something else to do.
By later morning, a tent had arrived, bright orange and purple under the shelter, and, as predicted, it would soon be gone.
