Surfaways

Preamble:

This is a surfing-themed tender, teasing May-December romance story written in ornate literary language, in languid, brooding mood. It has lite herbal infusions of Philosophy, Music, Art and Literature. The lovemaking scenes are described in sensual, erotic rendition.

If this style of calibrated narrative is not your thing, if you much prefer wailing and flailing action by sex triathletes, skip along.

***

Wave. Surfing. Surfer.

A storm out at sea churns the surface. Creates a chop. Smaller, then larger wavelets. These amalgamate, with enough wind, into heavy seas. What surfers are waiting for on distant coasts is the energy that escapes from the storm. It radiates outwards into calmer waters in the form of wave trains. Groups of waves, increasingly organised, that travel together. Each wave sets off a column of orbiting water, most of it below the surface. The wave trains produced by a storm are what surfers call a swell. A swell can travel thousands of miles. The more powerful the storm, the farther the swell travels.

As it travels, the swell becomes more organised. The distance between each wave in a train, known as the interval, becomes uniform. In a long-interval train, the orbiting water may extend more than a thousand feet beneath the ocean surface. Such a train can pass easily through surface resistance like a chop or other smaller swells, that it crosses or overtakes.

As waves from a swell approach the shoreline, they begin to feel the sea bottom. Wave trains become sets. Groups of waves that are larger, and longer-interval than their locally generated cousins. The approaching waves bend in response to the shape of the sea bottom. The visible part of the wave grows. The resistance from the sea bottom increases as the water gets shallower. It slows the progress of the water. Finally, it becomes unstable. It prepares to topple forward, to break. The rule of thumb is that it breaks when its height reaches 80% of the water's depth. An 8-feet wave breaks in 10-feet deep water. But, many subtle factors conspire to determine exactly where and how the wave breaks: wind, bottom contour, swell angle, current.

So a surf ride was set off a thousand miles away. Just for you. And you'll know it's for you, when you see it. It kind of, has your name on it.

Surfing.

A surfer just hopes that the wave has a catchable moment, a take-off point, a rideable face. That it doesn't break all at once. But instead, breaks gradually, successively, allowing the surfer the privilege to coast parallel to the shore, riding the face, for a glorious while, in that spot, in that moment, just before it breaks.

Surfing has a far horizon. A fear line, that makes it different from other sports. You can surf with your bros. But, when the waves get big, or you get into a foam of shit, there never seems to be anyone around. Everything out there is tangled with everything else in random unity.

Waves are the playing field. The goal. The object of your deepest desire and adoration. At the same time, waves are your adversary. Your nemesis. Even your mortal enemy.

The surf is your refuge. Your hiding place. Your watery bolt hole. But, it's also a hostile wilderness. A dynamic, indifferent world.

Surfer.

The ocean is a power beyond measure. But, as a surfer in its shifting embrace, you need to take its measure, as a matter of survival. You need to know your limits. Physical and emotional.

But, you don't know your limits unless you test them. And if you fail your test, you're to stay cool if things go awry. Panic is the first step to drowning.

And when you prevail, in that fleeting moment, composed by an unconscious conspiracy of body, mind and ocean, everything so totally comes together, the wave and you are a single state of nature. The universe is you, and you, the universe, if only for a moment. And that moment is forever. Nobody can take that from you. Ever.

Surfers have a word for this unique experience: stoke.

What other human activity has a unique word for the unique high it gives? Only two, orgasm and Nirvana.

Stoke doesn't mean just a high, but the unique, peculiar high that nothing but surfing can give. To say that the joy of surfing is simply one joy among many others is like saying that the earth is merely one planet among others.

***

The morning is breath and hush, the tide's rhythmic pull lapping at the cove's edge. Mist hangs low over the cliffs, silvered by the dawn, soft as whispered secrets. The world beyond feels distant, unreal. Only the sea is real. Salt-stung air. Hush of wind over water.

She stands barefoot on the sand. Feels the grains shift beneath her toes, cool and damp. She loves this hour. This stillness. The world caught between sleeping and waking.

The sun is rising for them. Showing itself. Or is it setting?

If one wakes up from a hundred year fairytale slumber, there are two moments in the twenty-four hour day when one cannot tell if it's beginning or end. Dawn and dusk in and of themselves are easily confused.

A woman in the ocean's quiet gaze. Forty-five, though the years have settled into her like sunlight in deep water. She is beautiful in that plain sort of way. Daring eyes. Faint lines kiss her skin. Strength laces her limbs. Body sculpted by a lifetime of moving with the waves.

Beside her, he stretches. Arms lifting over his head. The long lines of his body, golden from the sun, echo hers. Broad shoulders. Lean muscles. A frame made for the ocean's embrace. Today marks his eighteenth year, precisely, to the day. Though she still sees the boy in him, the child who had once clung to her hand, his voice bright with laughter.

She remembers that day well twelve years ago when his mother trotted him over from the neighbouring cottage. She was a surfer but could no longer surf because of a surfing injury.

"Can you make a surfer of him?"

Now, he stands in silence. Gaze drifting toward the horizon. Something thoughtful in the way he holds himself. Like a weight behind his eyes.

She reaches for her board, fingers running absently over the waxed surface.

"You're quiet today," she murmurs.

He glances at her, the flicker of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

"You always say that."

"Because it's always true."

A chuckle, low and warm. Then, after a moment, he turns toward her, reaches out. Tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers, salt-coarse and careful, linger for the briefest second against her temple. An old habit from childhood, when she would kneel before him, smoothing his windswept curls with the same gentle touch.

Smiling at him, her eyes searching his. "Ready?"

Nods. Together, they wade into the sea.

The water cradles them. Lifts them. Pulls them into its slow, rolling breath. They move in silence, paddling side by side, the rhythm second nature. He keeps close, his presence a steady warmth beside her.

She remembers teaching him to surf. The way he had clung to her at first, his small hands gripping her arms as she guided him onto his board. The way he had looked at her, wide-eyed, trusting, as she whispered, "It's just water, love. Let it carry you."

Now, he is fluid, effortless, moving with a grace that rivals her own. And still, he lingers at her side, watching her in that quiet, searching way of his.

Then, the wave.

A perfect arc, rising like a breath held between heartbeats.

She moves first, body igniting, paddling hard, then rising. A moment of flight. Of weightlessness. The world narrowing to nothing but speed and sea and wind. She cuts across the wave's face, arms outstretched, spray trailing behind her in silvered ribbons. She can feel him behind her. Hear the familiar whoosh of his board slicing water. The liquid sigh of the surf. The quiet hum of their shared motion.

For a moment, they are weightless together. Carving across the ocean's skin. Two shadows moving as one.

When you dance, you just fall into the music. You forget yourself. In surfing, the wave is the music.

Then, the wave gives way beneath them, spilling into froth. They let themselves fall. She tumbles into the water, surfacing with laughter tangled in her breath. He emerges beside her, shaking his head, his grin lazy and lopsided.

She reaches for him. Brushes the droplets from his cheek. Her touch light, familiar.

"Not bad," she teases.

He catches her hand before she can pull it away. Holds it there against his face for a lingering second. The warmth of him, the salt on his skin, the way he leans into her touch just slightly, it sends something deep and bittersweet through her. Something unspoken. Something heavy with time.

"You cheated. You let me win." he murmurs.

Arching a brow, "Did I?"

He doesn't answer. Only smiles. The slow kind. The kind that makes her heart ache in ways she cannot name.

For a long moment they float, letting the water carry them. The tide rocks them closer. Shoulders brushing. Fingers drifting near each other in the current.

Then, he exhales, slow and quiet. "I think I might leave soon."

She stills.

She had known it coming. Seen it in his silences. The way his gaze had started to stray beyond the horizon.

Eighteen. A threshold year. The edge of something new.

She reaches out. Cups his face in her palm. Thumb brushing the curve of his cheek. He closes his eyes for a moment. Leans into her touch like he used to when he was small, when comfort then was as simple as her hands, her mere presence, her breath against his skin.

He thinks this is so romantic. She considers it sad.

"You'll always come back to the sea," she whispers.

He opens his eyes. Something dark and unreadable in them.

Slowly, he nods. "Yeah," he says softly. "I will."

The tide pulls them gently a little apart. Salt in their hair. Wind on their skin. Sky above them pale, spacious, endless. In the hush between the waves, they drift, held together by water.

***

She looks him in the eye. Cocks her head in the direction of the outcrop of rocks at the far end of the bay.

"I've something to show you."

They paddle to the shore. She leads the way, rounding the outcrop of rocks.

"What about our boards?"

"Let them go."

"What?"

"Yes"

Their boards float away to the waves, embarking on a journey of their own. Where will they beach? Mavericks? Waimea? Padang Padang? More likely, the next bay.

They swim in from the black inkwell of shadow under the cliff.

Beneath the liquid mirror of the sea, where light fractures into trembling shards and time forgets its linear march, they swim down into the hush of the deep. Breaths borrowed from the world above. Bodies suspended between gravity and dream. The water pressed close, intimate and cool, wrapping around them like a silken whisper.

Then, as if summoned by some silent, ancient signal, they come. An effusion of silver lives, a murmur of fin and shimmer. A school of fish, numberless and precise, bloom around them in sudden, flawless choreography. The fish move not as many, but as one. An embodied thought. A living current. A ripple of instinct encoded in motion. She and he as intruder and witness, drift within their orbit, hearts stilled by the sheer eloquence of their being. The fish do not scatter, nor fear, but receive them with an indifferent grace, as though they are no more than another eddy in their fluid world. In that moment, they are neither above nor apart, but within, folded into the secret language of the sea, where silence sings and the self is gently unmade. It is not discovery, but initiation, into beauty that asks for nothing, and belonging that requires no name.

And then, suddenly, school's out.

They tread water, searching. Their feet sense sand. They swim right in, under the cliff, and surface.

They are standing at the back of a shallow cave, looking out under a low arch at the open sea. The water comes up to their armpits. The roof of the cave is barely two feet above their heads. The air is warm enough. Smells salty. In contrast to the brilliant light outside, the place is full of echoing gaps of blackness. There is a sense of the looming weight of the cliff above. Will the roof cave in?

There is something primordial about sea caves. Fascinating and forbidding all at once. Cosy and menacing. Secret hollows carved into the bones of the coastline, where water and stone have waltzed in slow violence for centuries. They beckon like forgotten doorways into the earth's memory. Half-drowned. Half-dreamt. Only accessible by slipping through the glinting skin of the sea. To reach them, you must surrender to the sea's mood, swimming beneath the sun's indifferent gaze, past rock and reef, where salt bites the lips and time loses its edges.

Within, the light falters. Shadows stretch long and liquid across cathedral walls of dripping stone. The cave becomes a cradle of echo, where even the smallest splash or breath blooms into music. And yet, though it may shelter you from the lash of the wind and the blaze of the sky, there is menace beneath the lull. The cave is a mouth that does not close. A womb that may not birth you back. It is both sanctuary and snare.

To enter a sea cave is to flirt with forgetting. And perhaps that is why we seek them. Not for safety. But, for the thrill of being on the edge of vanishing.

And this cave, the outer arch barely clears the surface of the water. It will be filled by any kind of swell.

They look at the seabed. Flecks of sunlight drop toward them from some light source somewhere. She puts her head down, flexes her knees to push off in a shallow dive toward the light source. He follows.

They swim underwater for half a minute. He wonders whether his breath will hold. This is the longest he has held his breath. What is this baptism of water that she is putting him through? An eighteen year old coming of age rite of watery passage?

They surface. An inner cave. Its roof has an opening to the sky. A one foot diameter opening. A natural skylight. Like in the movies. A temple, and then, an inner temple. A dramatic shaft of light, of biblical radiance and intensity, piercing the darkness. He admires the colour and the quality of the light.

They clamber up to the cave floor.

"What's with this shadowy Plato's cave thing?"

"My late husband, my bro and me. Our hidey-hole when we were young. Our little nook of the universe. We once spent a day holed up here living the noble savage thing. This was eons ago before global warming raised the tide to the level you see now. My husband's idea. He was always having ideas like this. Rousseau's romantic idea of man enjoying a natural and noble existence until civilisation made him a slave to unnatural wants and corrupted him."

Continuing, "I just want to reminisce a bit with you here."

Things bittersweet. Beautiful roses and sharp thorns are part of the same plant.

***

Pensive, "Let's sit at the back of the cave for awhile."

She leans against the back wall. He does the same, next to her.

They are at a loss for words. Immersed in an aura that is a hazy unity of fantasy and reality.

He looks at her. In the darkness, and the radiance of the skylight, she presents a surreal vision of loveliness. She is cast in a noir and a biblical movie in the same cinematic scene.

The back of the cave is cold as damp rock would be. She shunts over, sits in front of him. Pauses momentarily as if serving him notice of her next move. Reclines gently. After a minute of snuggling down to fuzzy comfort, she cocks her head to look at him, and then twinkles a kittenish knowing smile. The beginning is always a delicate time. Ending too. Today marks the beginning of the end.

They remain this way for a long while.

He thinks of the novels he had read, the movies he had watched, that featured caves.

Here, in the hush of tide and shadow, he feels the old myths of the earth return. These are places where gods might have slept. Or monsters wept. Or lovers disappeared forever. He could stay, curled within the rock's slow heart, lulled by the sea's wet breathing, wrapped in the illusion of safety. But comfort here is not freedom. It is the seductive kind that softens the will, that tempts him to forget the way back out.

"What are you thinking?"

He doesn't say anything at first. Nuzzles her neck.

"How did you spend the time when you were in this cave with your husband and your bro all day?"

The memory comes back to her. But only fleetingly. Like a lighted window seen from a hurtling express train. It flickers for an instant in the distance and disappears. She is relieved, but is unsure why.

"We were a close trio. It was my bro who introduced me to my husband. We did many things together. I just want to reminisce, relive that a bit, with you here."

She has a far wistful look. Ennui. More like aestheticised boredom. Like she is mulling a question that may never be answered. Or, best remains unanswered.

He is unsure of her meaning. But he has a sense that something is going on.

***

"How did you learn to swim?"

"We lived on a farm. Miles from nowhere. Not a soul in sight. No swimming pool. No swim coach. But, we had plenty ponds and rivers. I learned swimming on my own, from a book borrowed from the village library. Kind of, swimming-by-numbers."

"You did what?"

"Yes. It can be done."

"I believe you."

"How do you know?"

Pensively, "You're a noticer. The little inconsequential things in your study in your home. Shelves lined with shells, bird feathers, pebbles, eggshells. The skeleton of something that might be a bat. They were just bits that were lying on the ground that anyone else would step over or on. Flowers growing tiny and low to the ground. But, you saw beauty in them. So, I can imagine you poring over the swim instruction book pictures by the waterhole, and then, making them come alive."

"But, that ain't the whole story. My family moved to Hawaii. Growing up there, slicing through turquoise waves is a birthright, as easy as stepping out the front door. Pleasures that cost nothing. Belonged to no one. Accessible to all. I perfected my swimming those years there. Hawaii is an exaggerated version of paradises everywhere else."

"Is Surfing the ultimate freedom?"

She kind of understands why he is asking this Big Question. She once pondered this too.

"Sartre talked about radical freedom in his Existentialism."

"Surfing is freedom. Or so the surfer will say. But, Sartre would disagree. Freedom is a more anxious condition. One of taking control of yourself and your fortunes in the face of absurdity. Which raises the question: what is it to be free?"

"A surfer's intuition is to bust out of cultural expectation, to get free. Not let your culture, your history, tell you what things mean, or who you must be. Free to blow off work and bail for Oahu or Uluwatu or Teahupo'o."

"Is it just an absence of impediments? If the surfer is merely free to move, she'd bring her unfreedom in her travel baggage. There has to be something more..."

"A junkie is free to do whatever, and gets himself loaded against his own will, finding himself disgusting. A homeless man roams the city, deranged, with no sense of person and purpose, free to move, but going nowhere. What are they lacking? What would it take for them to be free?"

"Sartre said the person needs to be a minded and conscious being, experiencing the world with a distinctive perspective. An agent of her choices."

"OK, I get this. How does it relate to Surfing?"

"You live within a culture. You can't be totally free of it. And yet, you want your freedom. What then?"

"You're riding a wave. You can't control the sea. Your body is part of your given physical reality. Gravity pulls you into the sea, leaving you less free to move."

"Yet, with a bit of speed, the water suddenly becomes supportive. You gain new powers, to choose this or that direction, to accelerate, slow down, or execute moves according to your style and fancy. It's yourself then who gives form to the water by the free speed which you give yourself. This speed is different from other forms of speed. A swimmer increases speed by swimming faster. A powerboater revs the engine. Speed in surfing is more abstract. You build speed not by imposing your will on anything. You do this by negotiation between your free will initiatives and the circumstances that carry you along."

"Your path in and through an impersonal material reality becomes personal, or your own, because you're choosing self-consciously to go this or that direction while barreling along. You're continually adapting to the wave, making decisions on your own free will, on what to do next."

"And you leave no traces behind in your ride. Water is without memory, given its supple quality of reformation. The spray, erupting into a fanning plume, flies off the surfboard into the air, then rains into the ocean, reabsorbed, with no trace of a history. Each wave is its own complex moment, calling for a fresh adaptation of body movements."

"And when you do finally surf a giant wave, the feeling is not one of domination or owning, in the way that a mountaineer conquers and owns Everest. What you feel is joy, and momentous gratitude."

***

He tries to envisage the movie in Sartre's philosophy. They enjoy comfortable moments of silence. She relishes such pensive moments with him.

***

Hesitantly, "I want to look at you."

She turns her head back to look at him.

"Properly"

This cave, being an inner sanctum of a cave, is quiet. Through the skylight opening, the sky is a canvas of soft blue, untouched, unsullied.

She stands with her back to the cave wall, facing him. Wafts of wind from the skylight opening teasing the loose tendrils of her dark hair.

Forty-five. Though time has been kind. Her body still strong, sculpted from years of movement, of swimming, of riding the sea's crest with effortless grace. She has always felt at home in the ocean's velvety hold. Yet now, here, standing before his discerning gaze, she feels something foreign creeping along her skin. Nervousness.

He dips into his surf shorts pocket, takes out his cellphone encased in a waterproof jacket.

"Can I?"

She doesn't answer.

He kneels, cellphone camera poised in his hands. Expression unreadable.

Eighteen now, a man. And yet, she still remembers him as a boy, wide-eyed, small hands clutching hers as he learned the pull of the tide, the art of balance, the language of water. How different he has become. Taller, leaner, features sharpened by time, by experience. And those hands, once small, once clumsy, now hold a camera with quiet confidence.

He had hesitantly asked her to pose for him six months ago, for his art assignment, "The Human Form in Nature". He had explained it carefully, formally, like he was speaking to a stranger. Yet behind his words, there had been something else. Something raw. Something yearning. She had agreed.

But, they never got around to the photoshoot. His mother, a foreign correspondent, was killed the following day, while on assignment covering a conflict in South East Asia. She was that kind of woman. Lived big. You could see it in her eyes. You just could kind of picture, when she sprang out of bed each morning, she would tell herself to live. Live! Live! Live! She pushed each day to the max because tomorrow might not get scheduled. And that took courage. She was the kind of woman people stopped what they were doing to listen to. The family took a turn into a tailspin with the sudden loss.

Now, standing before him in a two-piece bikini, her pulse quivers unsteadily beneath her skin. Her top is loose from all the earlier activity, barely clinging to her bosom. She is trying not to jiggle her hanging breasts too lewdly. It seems less like she is wearing the bikini top, but the top is wearing her.

"You don't have to do this if you're uncomfortable," he murmurs, voice low, almost cautious.

Exhaling, slow, measured. "I'm OK. I owe you that photoshoot, even if your assignment is over."

Still, she hesitates.

"But, the light is low for a proper shoot."

"Perfect for chiaroscuro."

"What?"

"A light play technique. Light and dark, representing strongly contrasting tones, such as darkened shadows and vivid shafts of light, heightening emotional tension in the imagery."

He watches her. His gaze gentle, patient. Not a boy's admiration anymore. A man's. An artist's. In a perverse way, given their long association, a sort of son's.

She closes her eyes for a moment. Listening to the sea, letting it steady her.

***

Her hands reach behind her back, unclasping the top, letting it slip from her shoulders, exposing the swell of her bosom to the golden light. Much of her chest is taken up by her breasts. Lush, abundantly radiant.

There is a certain gravity to her. An elegance of years lived richly, deeply, without apology. Her breasts, though not large, hold a lushness shaped not by youth but by experience. Full not in volume, but in story. They rest with a gentle, natural descent, the weight of time having softened their rise, as if gravity itself is more a caress than a thief.

Her skin bears the delicate bloom of age. Silken still, but with a faint slackening. A whisper of a woman's seasons, like petals not yet fallen but slowly curling at the edges.

Her aureoles have darkened slightly, like dusk settling over rose gold. Not the untouched crescents of girlhood, but rather the sun-kissed, time-loved pert points of a woman who had given and received much pleasure from them.

To touch her there is not to reach for perfection, but for presence, for the quiet, confident allure of a body that no longer seeks to impress, only to invite. Her breasts do not defy time. They wear it with grace.

He wonders whether her breasts are heavier than they look. He resolves to determine that firsthand later. He feels hot just looking up her body and thinking this.

***

Her fingers move. Slow, deliberate. The ties at her hips come undone first. Fabric sliding down the curve of her thighs, pooling at her feet. She steps out of it.

Naked, though she longs to take off her flesh, and stand in her bones. She finds every moment erotic in his presence.

A faint brown bush. He can't tell if the rip curls are closely trimmed, or she is just that way. Shaped a delicate wedge. It affords scant cover to hide the thin lips dangling sweetly between her parted legs.

His eyes trace the gentle rise of her mons. Soft, fleshy swell framed by a sparse scattering of brown hair. Like windblown grass on a sun-warmed dune. Not the tidy smoothness of youth. Something more mysterious, more human. He finds beauty in the irregularity, the soft defiance of age. He leans in, breathing in her scent. Salt and skin and something secret. A ripple of awe passes through him.

Click.

He touches gently. Almost reverently. Letting his fingertips learn what eyes alone cannot. The texture. The subtle shift of colours. The contrast moves him. This interplay of strength and softness. Exposure and invitation. Warm and tender beneath his hand.

He leans closer. Narrows his eyes, gazing steadily. Like he is looking through a gap in a curtain, surveying an intriguing room. Mesmerised.

Then, he sees it. A dear little thing. This is the moment the world lost its vastness.

"Turn around."

Not a hussey's butt for sure. None of that crass inflated bubble butts he sees in his face on the internet. A woman's tail, longish and curvy.

Southerly, trim sturdy thighs that can be brought to bear in particular situations when things come to a head.

Click.

She instinctively closes and straightens her legs in parallel. Bends down impossibly low, as only a former ballerina can manage. She still keeps her legs straight. Her right hand grips her left ankle, to lock down the pose.

There is no vulgarity in his gaze. Only awe. In that quiet place is power, not merely physical, but intimate, knowing, ancient. She is a mature woman, yes, seasoned not by time alone but by a life deeply lived. And he, younger, yet already learning that there are places on the human body that are less about pleasure and more about surrender. Places that say, I trust you. I am here. I am open.

She is endlessly analysable. And yet somehow, analysis-proof. Any analysis effort runs aground on the limits of analysis.

Click.

What was that again Schopenhaeur said about free will? You can choose whatever you desire, but sorry, you are not free to choose your desires. Your desires choose you.

***

He looks up. Her eyes meet his. Calm and gleaming.

They have come so far. Her hitherto relentless search for a higher intimate meaning in life has taken her to this point.

"May I?"

A weak quarter nod.

Click.

Her initial stiffness dissolves into the rhythm of the shoot. It becomes something else now. Something natural, fluid. More giving.

She stretches out on the cave floor. Body half-curved. One knee bent. The line of her hip catching the golden light.

Click.

She stands, one foot resting against a rock. Hands loose at her sides. Waft of wind lifting her hair.

Click.

She turns away from him. Lets her head tip back, eyes closed, arms raised above her head in an unconscious echo of a wave's cresting rise.

Click.

He moves around her, capturing her from different angles, his concentration deep, almost breathless. He isn't just taking photos anymore. He is seeing her, truly seeing her.

Not just as his surf life coach. But, as a woman. As a subject of beauty. As something timeless. Something elemental. Something that belongs to the sea and the light and the hush of the world.

Time blurs. She no longer thinks of her nakedness, of the closeness between them. There is only art now, only movement, only the silent language of the lens and the body.

And then, it is done.

He lowers his cellphone, exhaling. His gaze still soft, still full of something unreadable.

She lets her arms fall to her sides. Breath slowing. Body warm from the sun, from the moment.

"That was..." she starts, then stops, not knowing how to finish the sentence.

He smiles. "Yeah."

A pause.

Then, still holding the cellphone, he reaches out, brushing a grain of sand from her shoulder. A small, absentminded touch. Familiar, intimate, nothing strange. Just a surfer and his coach, the tide still whispering at their feet.

She looks at the water, at the waves rolling in steady and endless. Changed, somehow. But whole. Always whole.

***

"Now, make wild love to me before the tide comes in and drowns us both. It won't do to befuddle the Coast Guard, for them to find two naked bodies, an older woman and a young man, who are later identified as longtime neighbours."

"And then, we'll get the fuck out of here, or we'll drown in the rising tide."

"Still, though, this is a beautiful place to die."

***

Her bikini and his surf shorts lie scattered on the cave floor, side by side, like little creatures of the sea, restful and at peace.

She studies him for a long, unhurried moment. This young man in the fullness of his prime, his body all salt-kissed skin and sinewed grace. There is something almost disreputable, even sordid, in his male perfection. It makes her ache.

He lies back on the stone floor, face turned to the ceiling of the cave. A shaft of sunlight pours through the cleft above, illuminating him in a pale, golden blaze. He squints against it, haloed like the protagonist of some unspoken myth.

She straddles his thighs, facing him, and the mouth of the cave beyond, where the sea breathes louder now, the tide pushing in.

They don't speak. Don't need to. The urgency between them has already made its decision.

She is the surfer. He, the wave.

And now, she rides.

She lowers herself onto him, her weight becoming his gravity. His hands rise to meet her, gentle at first. Tender, reverent, as if learning her anew. But the gentleness quickly blurs, turns hungrier, and still she welcomes it.

She begins to move. Slowly, sinuously, like a creature remembering its own body. A twist, a flex, as if her very skin must stretch to accommodate how right this moment feels. Her eyes find his, placid, brimming. It's a click, a lock, a feeling falling into place. Something long dormant stirred alive again.

He wraps his arms around her, cradling her back. Kisses her over and over, at her collarbone, her breast, and lower still, where sensation draws breath into a sigh. His mouth lingers, suckles gently. She moans, softly, helplessly.

Now she moves again. It's glorious. A molten rhythm. A tender ache that blooms with each roll of her hips. The pleasure swells, repeating, like a tide swelling in the belly of the earth.

"Mmm..." she hums, a music made of breath and bliss.

He gazes up at her, eyes glistening. There is need there, and wonder, and something deeper still. She sees it. Something inside her yields. She lets out a sob. The kind that comes when joy arrives disguised as release.

She leans down. Kisses him as though she is drowning in him. Skin to skin. Breath to breath. They hold each other, becoming one language.

Their bodies find a rhythm. Intent, deliberate, deeply attuned. Like tide and moon. Like wave and pull.

A shared shudder. Then a tremor. Everything so totally comes together.

And then, stillness.

It all unfolds in minutes. But it feels like a lifetime, like they've travelled the world in the span of a breath.

He exits, but not without extreme regret. It is like breaking with the habit of a lifetime.

They collapse like rag dolls into a tangled flesh heap, lingering in the zone.

Maybe it has been awhile? Maybe it is youthful vigour? Maybe it is the primal aura of the cave? Maybe it is the scandalous May-December thrill? Maybe it is the first time crossing of the line? What is for sure is the coming together of these maybes.

She experiences a surge of ridiculous happiness. An orgasm surprises her every time, even though she expects it. This one in particular exceeds and explodes all traditional ratings of superlative lovemaking. She is in a fairytale space. Things are not what they seem.

She wants to be a violinist in the piazza. Dance on a hilltop. Sing in her sleep. Eat petals off flowers. Run into the rain instead of out of it. Plant a tree. Roll in the grass with her dog. Farm weed. Pirouette till she falls over. Then, writhe a floor dance till her dress is rag. Take in smells of garlic and oil and wine from a sidestreet kitchen. A surfer philosopher. She wants to ride a blue bicycle around a quaint Brittany village.

There is something whimsically romantic about these.

These emotions, they flow from nowhere. And everywhere.

After he climbs down, he nuzzles, then kisses her, to give thanks for making the moment possible.

He is tired in a way no other person had been before. Yet, it feels like it is the best of times.

They feel something abstract and binding. Like an oath to a cause that can't quite be defined.

She lies over him. Flesh pressing. His body like soft summer water that receives a swimmer's body. That bears the swimmer lightly afloat. Her heart is full in a way she has never experienced before. She has never felt so connected to herself.

Nestled in the bakery warmth of his surfer chest, she imagines this as a way of life for the rest of her days. She doesn't need nothing more than this. She imagines she hears the chime of temple bells.

They are too shattered to be mindful of the rising tide. They fall into serene slumber.

***

Epilogue

The North Devon Gazette

10th June

Concern Grows for Missing Surfers from Hobbs Hill

Police are continuing to investigate the disappearance of two local residents, a woman in her mid-forties and an eighteen-year-old man, who were reported missing earlier this month from Hobbs Hill.

The pair, believed to be experienced and enthusiastic surfers, were last seen on Saturday, 1st June. Concerns have mounted after two surfboards matching the make and colour typically used by the missing individuals were found washed up on Putsborough Sands, roughly a mile and a half north-west of Croyde, on 5th June.

The boards were discovered by members of the public and are currently being examined by authorities. While police have not yet confirmed the boards belong to the missing pair, the possibility is being actively considered.

The incident has prompted quiet concern in the close-knit seaside community, where both individuals were well known. Devon and Cornwall Police have appealed for anyone with information to come forward.

***

In the sultry, salt-sweet air of Bali's southwest coast, where the humid breath of the tropics brushes against black-sand shores, lies Canggu. Not a mere village, but a dreamscape infused with the languid rhythm of tides and the ceaseless pulse of surfboards slicing liquid sapphire.

A contradiction dressed in sunlight. A place where rice paddies shimmer in lush green humility beside chic cafés. Temple incense curls skyward while tattooed surfers wax boards like ritual.

The ocean here is no passive blue. She rears and dances, all muscle and grace, with swells that roll in from the Indian Ocean like whispered promises or roared challenges.

Canggu's soul is stitched together from fragments of myth and foam. By day, the surf culture reigns. Lean, sun-bronzed bodies gliding over waves with fluidity, their presence both feral and reverent. There is a language among them, not of words but of knowing glances, the nods exchanged at dawn on motorbikes bristling with fins, boards lashed like sacred cargo. Wax under fingernails, salt crusting eyebrows, reef tattoos earned not inked. The marks of devotion.

And when the sun tips west, sinking into the horizon, Canggu shifts once more. Beach fires crackle. The music rises. Slow at first, then with tribal insistence. Barefoot silhouettes move in the sand, caught between ancient mysticism and the wanderlust of the modern nomad.

Time folds in strange ways. Surfers chase the perfect wave and, perhaps unknowingly, brush against the perfect moment. The sea is not scenery, it is scripture. And the ones who read it know that here, amid the ash-black sand and the warm, wild sea, life can be as simple and as sacred as a ride on a wave.

***

A woman and a young man are hunkered over a small table at the Madu Oka Café.

At the table on their left is a gaggle tribe of surfies, stoked in gushing exuberance about the better waves of the day, high on the slow drip of leisure. A city of bottles on their table. They are relishing a more forgiving style of capitalism.

Table on right, a man who could well be a Professor of something utterly important, sips his drink in measured silence with ceremonial ease. His companion appears effortlessly wealthy, flush with the glow of having everything, and nothing to prove. Sun-warmed, he leans back with the easy closeness of someone who has shared more than just vacations.

Table just behind, an idyllic bohemian type lounges with a frangipani tucked carelessly behind one ear, leafing dreamily through The Waste Land, savouring T. S. Eliot's disillusionments.

But, all this is mere speculation. In this place, such details blur. The shopkeepers look like artists. The barmen, tenors. The street sweepers, jazz musicians. What a highly evolved society. Never have people in a place appeared more rationally ordered.

From the bar comes the soft chime of ice in a shaker. Somewhere in the background, an old vinyl spins, Nina Simone, perhaps. Voice honeyed, a little sad. The breeze, on its way, seems unhurried, carrying with it the perfume of frangipani, sandalwood, and the faint memory of distant rain.

The young man leans in to the woman. She has something to tell him...

The End