The distant lighthouse shines titanium-white, its walls stretched like canvas in the bleaching sun, framed by jagged grey cliffs, all arrayed along the coast in knife-sharp, rocky splinters.
Sheep-shorn grasses skirt the stoney outcrops, softened under quilts of golden bracken, and daintily dabbed with bright yellow gorse flowers. A skylark lifts up into the cobalt sky, then descends in shrilling diminuendos, back to the pale-ochre lichened rocks.
I sit on a vertiginous ledge, gazing down into the clear turquoise waters of a timeless sea, where foaming waves shush gently over the emerging and submerging rocks. I hear the faint trilling calls of oyster catchers chattering away by distant rock pools, while scattered seaweed fronds float forlornly, adrift in the froth below.
A dark sinuous body mass, almost serpent-like, breaks the fractured surface and slides back underneath. Its momentary existence becomes doubtful, but faith is restored, as a splotched grey head, with thick white whiskers, and a dog-like jawline, pops up above the salty fray.
A grey seal with earnest eyes, as black and infinite as the cosmos, looks curiously, and a little timorously, back at me. A trembling thread of connection vibrates between us, knotting two opposing empires of being, as we stare at each other across a chasm.
My heartbeat quickens with the thrill of encounter, but our shared shock is by courage won over with time, as she deftly flippers closer to me, looking up from just below my ledge. Her wild strength, sentience and intelligence is palpable, and present, as her nostrils flare to receive my scent.
We regard each other intently, wondering at our mutual existence on this wide Earth, before she slowly casts away on the current, briefly looking back once more, before disappearing under the fractal waves, returning to her watery kelp-green underworld.
Stories of the selkie seal folk, dance around my mind, chiming in with the cymbal clashing waves echoing around the rocks.
Hours wind their witching spirals around me, as evening eventually falls with a slow crimsoning sun. I look out to the hazy horizon, where air and water currents merge seamlessly into one.
Fiery ribbons of orange and mauve twist and tangle like flames, throwing out their starry embers into the ashes of night.