Tempest
L.B. Stimson • copyright August 29, 2013
The wind whirled and encircled its icy fingers into the dark, cascading hair that fell loosely to the slender, corset-tethered waist. Tempest reveled in the cool grittiness of the sand as she curled her toes into the freshly dampened, crusty beach. All was quiet now. Rarely did anyone venture down to the secluded beach in weather like this, much less a girl with her skirt hiked up to reveal her delicate and shockingly, racy- blue and white-striped bloomers. Tempest caressed the silky softness of the bloomers she had secretly purchased from the lady who ran the corner house.
She dared to laugh aloud. Her chapped, ruby lips offered up a slight smile of joy and rebellion. It was only a few weeks ago that she sat on this now cold beach beneath a parasol to keep her skin from burning.
“Tempest,” her mother chastised, “proper young ladies of your stature do not show the mark of the sun.”
Her mother had spit the words out as though the reference to the warm hue of sun-marked skin was a disease pouring forth from her throat. Some days, Tempest thought, she’d like to ram the pointed edge of her useless parasol straight through the heart of ...The roaring crash of an over zealous wave brought her back to her reality. The wind, the salty air, the mesmerizing dark blue hue of the horizon teased her.
It called out to her.
“Tempest...”
She knelt and grasped a handful of sand, squeezing it tightly, but it only fought back and slowly escaped through her fingers. Tempest winced as some of the glassy grains embedded into a small cut on her palm. She wiped her freshly cut palm on her satin bloomers, leaving a narrow streak of blood across the perpendicular stripes. Tempest sighed and started back towards the narrow path that time, wind, and water had cut into the gray, rocky cliff.
As she headed back up the pathway, she tossed her newly polished boots over her left shoulder. The laces shifted and cut into her neck while one of the heels gnawed at her back. Tempest stopped and removed the dangling boots. She untied the laces and watched her boots tumble down the path until they landed in a broken thud. She continued to the pathway’s entrance and gingerly walked along the cliff’s edge as the knee-high grass clawed at her exposed feet.
In the distance she could see the shadow of an arch that jutted out from the cliff’s edge. Beneath it the waves frantically swirled into a deep pool of redwood green and topaz blue. She reached up to wipe a strand of hair from her mouth and tasted the grains of sand still clinging to her fingers. She ran her tongue across her chapped lips as the sea spray tingled her bare arms. There was no sun now to damage her pale skin as the soothing light of the moon now emerged to reveal the way.
Its gentle, white hue cast a spotlight on her raw and wild stage. Laughing, Tempest stretched out her arms and swirled around in a circle in slow, erotic circles like she had seen the corner house girls dance. Tempest danced and teased the edge of her stage while her audience beckoned to her seduction from below. Her awkward and daring performance spun into frenzied circles. The brazen, musical chants and applause of the waves numbed her senses and then, Tempest stumbled.
Days later a tattered parasol was found entangled in seaweed that had washed ashore. As time passed, her named faded, and history would only remember her as “the girl that fell.”