Sweet and Short

Challenge: 10 out of 20, October
Prompt: beach

Untitled, original (no fandom), Gen
Length: 432 words

It's such an essential feature of the city, that stretch of sand by the sea. Twice a day it is submerged by the tide that sometimes reaches almost up to the stone wall and leaves behind long stripes of weed and other rubbish. When people walk along the beach during low tide, their dogs run free and scare the seagulls and other birds digging through the weed for food so that they take flight, protesting loudly.
She has no dog to accompany her but doesn't mind even if occasionally someone else's canine friend comes to greet her and proudly display a stick or some other treasure it has found. Her feet sink in the wet sand at the water's edge, and when she glances back she can see her trail slowly vanishing.
The wind is getting stronger again. It blows the loose end of the scarf over her face, and when she raises a hand to pull it down she feels a light spray of water in the air. It'll rain soon, she knows she should head back home before the full force of the gale reaches her but she doesn't want to. Not yet, not now when the bite of the wind is just right: sharp and cold but not freezing.
This is the best part of autumn for her. Summer with its heat and crowds is a thing of the past and the beach is almost empty. The air is crisp and fresh and the winds come almost every day. She loves walking here in this weather, carrying her shoes in hand and listening to the wind and the sea. Eventually she'll once again reach one of the staircases that lead up to wall and the Beach Boulevard, and there she'll sit down on the steps for a moment to clean her feet before slipping them into the street shoes.
Those shoes are comfortable to walk in, but they mean Being in the City. When she takes them off and strays onto the beach, every step takes her further away from the everyday and deeper into a world of air and water and sand. And yet she only needs to turn her head to see it right there: the city, her home, the place that she loves. Maybe its closeness is precisely the reason why the empty beach feels so intoxicating? No need to spend hours trekking in search of solitude, she just needs to descend the stairs and turn her face to the sea – and she’s alone.
She closes her eyes and smiles, then laughs aloud into the wind.