The exercise:
Write something which takes place at: the beach.
Arrived at my parents' house just before five this afternoon. Have already been to the beach twice today - once this evening and once this afternoon at the ferry terminal while we waited for our sailing.
2 comments:
I guess you know you're on holiday when you're at the beach twice in one day :-D I don't really have a beachcomber here, but I certainly have a man at a beach :)
The beach
The Dnieper river wound through Prince Narodskiy's estates and then continued on through the country, heading southwards towards the Chorniya Moria. On the banks that the Prince owned were two small beaches of soft, whitish sand separated by a dense outthrusting of forest. The Prince took advantage of that to keep one beach strictly private for himself and his family and favoured guests, and the other was permitted for use by the household and retinue. Stan, no matter what Danits might insinuate, was firmly in the household and retinue camp, and so he found himself standing barefoot in the sand at the water's edge, staring out at the blue-green waters of the river, and wondering what he could impress an archimandrite with that would be seen as Science and not witchcraft.
He rubbed his hands together as he thought, as though washing them, and when they began to redden and feel sore he looked down as though realising for the first time what he was doing. Then he sat down on the sand, and thought some more.
He was not particularly political, or at least that was how he thought of himself. He preferred to stay out of arguments and discussions and machinations about who should take over a Bishopric, or who should administer an oblast, and he tried as much as possible to make his service at the court and his value clearly evident from what he produced. But the church was inherently political and he was well aware that Prince Narodskiy viewed it as alternately a menace, when it threatened to change laws that he approved of, and a tool when it proposed doctrine that he agreed with. Sailing a channel through the currents of theological desire and Princely approval seemed like a job for a better sailsman than Stan.
He stood up again and brushed sand from his trousers and looked around for his shoes; they were a few metres distant where he'd kicked them off. They were old shoes, with a hole forming at the toe, but he still liked them a lot.
As he thought that, it struck him that his situation was much like that of his shoes. Comfortable, but precarious.
He pushed his feet back into his shoes, dusting yet more sand from his feet and wondering how it clung to everything, and considered what he knew of the two archimandrites that Prince Narodskiy was most agitated about at the moment. One was head of the Cave Monastery while the other, lesser, man never stopped talking about Chernihiv. The Cave Monastery was rumoured to be acquiring a printing press; a significant expenditure that would certainly bring them power, mostly political. Chernihiv was a mystery to Stan, for whom travel was a luxury that happened to other people.
He trudged away from the beach, his mind still full of whirling thoughts, feeling like the placid river hadn't helped him at all.
Greg - indeed. And, somehow, I never used just 'beach' as a prompt tag, so 'beachcomber' is as close as I can get... without putting some effort into grouping similarly named prompts.
Ah, more of Stan already! Much appreciated :)
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