She
had managed to steal another hour of sleep before being woken with
the sweet scent of coffee drifting up from the kitchen below. She
stretched her arms as she sat up, allowing her body to sit before
leaving her bed for the second time that morning. She pulled on the same dressing gown she had worn only an hour earlier and put on her
boot slippers that were lined with sheep wool, she had bought them
locally from a friend. Almost everything she owned was locally bought
she liked the idea of knowing where things were from and knowing the
people who made them. She favoured supporting her local community
where she could rather than going to the bigger shops that were an
unfavourable half hour or so drive away on a good day but could be an
hour if not more at the height of peak traffic. She got a sense of
pride, seeing the smiles when she bought products. From a young age
she had learnt that a community was everything, she had practically
been raised by the community, her mum had died when she was younger
then she lost her father in her late teens that when she learned the
true meaning of it takes a village to raise a child, as everyone
chipped in to help her granddad, who was left to raise her to the
young woman she had become. If it hadn't of been for her flat, her
passion for the ocean and her boyfriend she dreaded to think where
she would be, though she knew there would always be help when she
needed it.
As she walked down the stairs she lingered on each
step feeling every creak underneath her feet, the flat was old much
like the average age of the residents in the town, if it wasn't for
the sea and the simple life the seaside town brought there wouldn't
be nearly as many young people as there were, or as many young
families even if they were still little in numbers there were still
enough to make it somewhere people didn't just go to retire.
When she wasn't in the ocean, she would be working in her little cafe, the last remnants that still remained of her dad, he'd built the cafe on his own in his twenties, he'd wanted to bring something new, and also wanted a place where he could display his art. When he had a free couple of hours he would hide in a room and work on his next masterpiece, or he'd go off to some remote place and capture beauty in areas nobody else would think to look. He could look in the most obscure place yet take such a breathtaking picture that had not only a world of emotion but somehow could tell a story. His daughter had found some of his old pieces she had forgotten about. She kept them in the spare room, though most had pride of place in the cafe she thought its where they should be. She was proud of what her dad had done and the work he had left behind, not only the cafe which in summer months was a hit with tourists but could do better in the cold winter months but the locals kept it afloat for the best part of seven months out of the twelve months she was open. When she wasn't in the cafe on the odd days, she took off she'd be out in the ocean trying to find the most voluminous wave she could surf. When she was young her granddad would take her out after school teaching her that if she were kind to the ocean it too would be kind to her, she'd learnt to treat it like a friend, in doing this she always seemed to be able to catch the best waves, she wasn't sure if it was what her granddad had said all those years ago or if it was coincidence or skill on her part, whichever it was she didn't mind as it meant every competition she entered she somehow always won.
She also had her own personal photographer in the sense of her boyfriend, when he wasn't helping her in the cafe, he too would be by the beach trying to get the best picture of her porcelain white skin against the tranquil blue ocean and the crisp white waves as they broke. He'd taken countless photos for various magazines and websites but he found his best work was when he had no limitations of what he could capture, though his favourite photos were of those he had taken of his beauty and the way she could manipulate the waves with the ease of merely just manoeuvring her board along the white tops.
