The Beach, Tuesday Afternoon

[endsthegame]

Ben had been right about one thing: spring had crawled back into the land, tentative but kind.

With all the turmoil of late, it couldn't have come at a better time, this day, an annual one - though it was the second to last such one he was likely to have on this island. (Just... one more year to go, marking time.) He wandered out onto the sand with fresh rope and wood packed up, finding the little outcropping of rock he'd stowed the raft under the previous autumn.

He knelt down by it, and inspected the damage. Not too bad, this year, but enough to give him something to do. And so he got to work, redoing knots, whittling away the rot, pulling the new ropes tight until they left red streaks all over his palms.

(Older him had been here, he remembered vaguely, and looked at the raft and thought about ice floes on Trondheim and canoes on Moctezuma--)

Once he was done, he'd push it back out to sea and sit on it for a while. Right now, he was working, and it felt good.

[[ open! ]]