Dolphin Magic

Chapter 2

Pelican

She heard the unfamiliar sound, it seemed so unnatural, so loud, an unwelcome intrusion to her morning coffee ritual. Milky coffee in hand, she stopped short of the door that led her to the sea and listened. The sound angered her, its interruption, its loud hum drowning out the melodic slap of the surf. She parted the vertical blinds with her fingers and peeked between them, her aquamarine eyes pinpointing the source of the noise. Her eyes narrowed as she stared down the vessel, trying to sink it with her pupils.

"You are not welcome here," she growled in her best villain impersonation. This stranger did not sit well with her.

He did not notice her as she watched him through the slit in the blinds. He looked about her age, but did not look like her. He looked like one of them. His motorboat tied to the dock, probably from the North. He emerged, tanned from the sun, not from his birth. His wavy hair grown down his neck, tussled by the salty air, shimmering like golden threads from a pharaoh's robes, bleached from the sun, from many days at sea. His body, taught with youth and hard work, but not the hard work she had known. His muscles quivered with a new-found strength, not from a lifetime of sweat earned labor.

She watched him take the old bicycle off the boat – a bicycle much older and worn than the boat that purred to the dock like it was just for show. She saw him glance over at her house, saw the fleeting moment it took him to dismiss her house at once. The dismissive glance that told her all she needed to know about him and his kind.

She watched him pedal away, she presumed toward town. Once he vanished from sight down the path, she tried to restart her ritual, but the fear of him returning while she was ankle deep in sand was too much to risk. Instead, she ate a piece of black toast, buttered on both sides, and strapped on her toolbelt to begin where she had left off the day before.

Her bedroom was the first room she had tackled, a cocoon of a room that cradled her at night and kept her safe from everything but her dreams. Its honey colored floors gleamed with her persistence, reflecting the amber sunshine at daybreak and the coral sunsets at dusk. She had stripped and sanded each plank by hand, replacing the boards that had worn too much, cannibalizing the rest of the house when needed. But the end was worth it - the scabs, cuts, scrapes, splinters and sweat were now a perfect womb. She plastered the walls by hand, mixing the mud in a 10 gallon bucket, methodically spreading it in long, even strokes down the walls, up the walls, filling every crack and dent like covering a scar. In the end, the walls, painted silvery blue, called to her not unlike the waves of the sea.

She furnished her room sparsely, but exactly the way she needed. Wooden bedframe, headboard salvaged from her family's raft, a bitter reminder she needed. Her dresser, adorned with sea treasures and a framed photo of a man, dark hair, tanned face, strong jaw, but warm eyes gazing out of the frame. She also kept a mirror, a desk with her plans for the house scattered on the top, and a stack of books she was going to devour one day, when she was finished.

But she was far from finished, and today would resume her work by restoring the wooden floor planks in the living room.

The house was not large: two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, bath, but to one woman and a tool belt, it may well have been a castle.

She nailed and sanded, repaired and replaced the wooden boards just like she had done in the bedroom, but the knowledge she had gained from the work made her progress in the living room go much faster.

Today she stained. She opened each window, the front and back doors, letting the salty winds rush into the room and carry away the fumes from the honey colored lacquer. She placed a record on his prized turntable, one of his favorites, and let her mind drift to memories of him as she applied the stain in long, even strokes.