365 Ficlets - Day #40 ~ "Piper at the Gates of Dusk"

Jake leant back against the groyne and slipped his feet out of his shoes. He loved the feeling of the crushed shells that made up the beach under his feet. Hundreds of years of shellfish farming here had led to an entire beach made up of seashells.

The sun was sinking over the Isle, like a giant flaming orange that was slowly being lowered onto the land. There, in the quiet, Jake took out his pipe and began to play.

Sometimes when he went through this ritual, day trippers who had forgotten to leave earlier in the evening would stop and listen to him as he cast the melancholy laments of his own composition onto the offshore breeze, but not this evening. It had rained almost all day and the town had been spared the usual July influx of tourists and sun worshippers that would come from as far away as London to eat oysters and blister in the sun.

As he played, the sun continued to sink and all of his thoughts turned to Odette. The music came out of him as if it had its own anima and he felt at peace once more.

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