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[Tibley]

A gull flutters on the sea breeze before it props itself on a rock to my right. Its beady eyes inspect me, a stranger, polluting its territory with this mechanical monstrosity and my filthy rolling tobacco. Nonplused, it rises with a start and sails nonchalantly behind a sand dune.

The waves are stroking the golden shore beneath me, lulling me into a dreamy haze, beckoning me into the limitless depths. From here I can see the end of the ocean, the horizon where the sky falls in to it and the whole world stops.

I am alone in my thoughts; my brother sits to my left, warily batting off bugs, while a family of sun seekers stroll across the sand. Their baby son screeches; it will be years before he realises the fortune and the beauty behind all of this. Twenty meters to my right, the sea turns a shade of purple and licks the shards of algae covered stone like a tongue.

I rise to dab my toes into the wake.

Where the tide has crept in and snuck out again, the last remaining pools of water have coated the sand in glass sheen, a varnish that suggests you will smash it with your step.

What a pair we make, me with my jeans rolled knee high, paddling meekly in the icy blue, a cigarette hanging precariously from my trembling lips...And my brother, moaning constantly about the grains of sand between his toes.

Later, as we settle back on the towels, he reads what I have written. Offended he decides, ever the brave heart, to run at a sprint into the ocean, screaming, "I'll show you!" while battling waves in a fit of hysteria - the foolhardiness of youth!

A forlorn figure he is now, walking with all the awkwardness of a wind-up toy soldier, mechanical and full of pride.

"You didn't think I'd do it, did you?"

"I never though you'd be stupid enough", I reply.

"I'm not stupid, I'm daring".

I'd tell him that's one in the same to me, but I don't think he'd want to understand.

X
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Dressed As Sharp As The Knife That Killed Julius