This is Border Country.
If you come here on a clear day, you can see into the future.
Just a few seconds – but sometimes, that’s enough.
It can be lonely. But it is peaceful in a way no other place seems to be. Peaceful, and quiet.
The air is cool. It soothes. It is never too cold, or too hot. The sand is soft beneath your feet.
Lights dance in the night sky. It is worth it to visit at night. There is no moon, but the stars seem so close you could touch them.
You will not try. Not at first.
The sound of the sea is comforting. That rhythm of “hush, hush”. I can understand, you know, why you’d want to stay.
It is quiet in Border Country. Just that “hush, hush” of the waves.
Sometimes the sweet breeze will catch the trees, and the leaves will join their breath to the ocean’s lullaby.
Stay here too long, though, and you’ll start to fade away.
The waters of eternity will lap at your feet until you see the sand beneath them. It will seem beautiful, but don’t be fooled.
Everything is beautiful here.
When finally you reach your hands up to the stars, their twinkling light will shine through your flesh. Your hands will pass through them. Like smoke.
You will know then that you have been here too long.
Your translucent feet will lose their charm.
But now, the way home seems harder to find.
There’s never a clear day, not any more, and you can only look into the past.
All is grey. The sky, at first, and then the sea, its colour fading until it is a dull steel one moment, ash the next.
Then even the sand beneath your feet is grey.
Then you are grey. The trees’ colour is unknown, for they are lost from your sight; the very air is thick, and ghostly.
You are alone. As you have always been.
At last you must make a choice.
To find your way back through the fog
Or walk into the sea.