The sun was still slightly encased in haze from the faraway blaze of forest fires on the mountain. The air was red and the water roared its uneven waves onto the shore. The ocean was a million shifting shining spikes, and thick blackberry vines roped the beach round.
Tottering on, their quartet accompanied by dog lean and crouch into the million shards of light reflected on the waves or falling out of the sky. Each one contemplating then deciding; two women reach to the waist, disrobing and undressing in a single overlapped moment, dancing their way over the stone fragments and into watery weightlessness. Their shyer counterpart demurs to the stripped logs.
She takes her sweater off, leaving it to the side, and feels her skin burn. Kinder, the wind cools her and she finds she can bear it. In shoes and socks, she feels no effects from the pebbles and rocks. Still, she stays on the log watching the water through sunglasses. At least she can still pick up a signal here, sending nonvocalic messages back to the city. Connected.
He watches the water wave over the two women, but his love makes one more beautiful. With tethered attention, he moves in line with her, together in an affection transparent and visible. He takes off his shirt and submits to the cold ocean, then to her warm body. Laughing, they embrace.
The sun’s fractioned strength, slighted by the smoke of burning forest, cannot warm the lone woman. Without a lover’s heat, she slips out of the ocean and back to the sharp terrestrial world of stones and shells. Balancing on a bare log, she teeters along, finding each smooth surface with her feet and travels the edge, eating the fruit of the enclosing vines. It is sweet but sharp; juice stains just as well as blood from a thorn's cut.
The world is silent, other than the roar of the water. The sun, the ocean: they require no language and the mind begins to empty and open. Only the damp smell of smoke signals an ancient alarm to sound through, though without the burden of words.
Burning blood red now around the edge of the sky, the sun sinks further into flames reflected on the waves. It is time to go. Swimmers flock clumsily into clothes, sticking and wet. Barbed and silent, blackberry bushes coil the beach like a ancient serpent leaving only one entrance, one exit.
Uneven waves thrown against the rocks are the only sound, other than a foreign ping of messages sent through the ether. No birds. No bears. No voices. Even the dog is silent, sniffing around roots under logs, as though the smoke had stung their eyes and stolen away their voices.
Back along the track growing thinner as suckers seek more ground spreading their tender thorns into space. A spike find skin, purchase and small pain, a few drops of blood the price of passage. Hands to mouths bruise black with berry blood, gory grins prod seed-filled laughs.
Back on tracks empty of train cars and engines, a muted half-lit world of smoulder.
Suddenly more: a horn blasts, the engine's light close and getting closer. Another blare and blast, and all four – five, with the dog held close in the narrow ditch. The dog struggles against arms struggling against animal instinct to Run. And at once the train is on them, shaking the ground and air into quaking thunder and dust. Ditch, dog, arms, back, backpack, tracks and train: something bursts as the huge wheels grind past. Paper bleeds, spewing from the backpack in an arc across the tracks. Some thing small and hard and black bounces into pieces. And is gone.
Empty tracks again, the train already around the next bend but the shaking continues. Hearts in throats the five stand with grey fingers stock still but shaking. At their feet small pieces of black plastic and in one hand berries crush and stain to dark.
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