Of Sea and Sky: Part 1

She was a queen, a lonely island queen quite solitary on a rocky dune with summer sand grass itching her bare ankles. He was a shipwreck, made of sticks and cinder and seawater, wobbling down the beach with sand in his eyes.

“What are you doing?” he asked the island queen. Her dark hair danced on the wind against the pale blue sky. The queen did not reply.

            “Something of sea, something of sky…” she murmured, bending over to search in the long grasses. When she clutched at her long garments that flowed about her in the same way as her hair, it revealed that she was not a grown woman but a young one. She looked up from beneath that shaggy, dark canopy and caught sight of the young man whom the ocean had spit up.

            “I’m making a wish,” she answered. There was something of ash in her voice, like perhaps she too had been a shipwreck once.

            “And how does one make a wish?” the boy asked.

            The queen squinted at him with surprising dark blue eyes that did not belong with her tan skin and dark hair. Standing straight again, the top of her head only came to his chin, but she seemed far more imposing than her stature suggested.

            “You could use one too,” she decided. The girl brushed past him in a wind of jasmine and firewood.

            “I’m Caspian,” he called, stumbling in the sand to follow her.  Wind catching at her clothing, the girl, who was a stark whirl of colors against the pale landscape, turned.

            “I’m Lani,” she answered, and a smile began to curl the edges of her mouth. A shake of her head had her turning again and Caspian struggling to follow in the fine, shifting sand.

Working Title. Let me know what you think!