an original piece by Dejana Talis -not to be used without permission- This was a freewrite exercise, written on the spur of the moment without planning or focused thought. She stood beside the ocean, long blonde hair trailing in the wind, her dress floating about her like a cloud. Her back was to him, the smooth curves of her shoulders guiding his eyes to wander her form, guiding his mind to wonder what more lay beneath the pale yellow dress. He shook himself. He wasn't here to think about that. It was a lovely day, and he had come to clear his mind. Since waking up, finding her gone, finding his heart shattered into a thousand jagged pieces on the floor, he just had to get away. Cruel, this. Here his girlfriend had just left him and now there was a new woman in this place he had hoped would be secluded, and already he was wanting her. He was disgusted with himself. Maybe he deserved it after all, the rejection, the loneliness. There must have been good reason why she left him. Maybe she had seen a wolf hiding within, lying in wait to spring. Surely this stranger must have heard his car approaching over the gravel shore, but she gave no hint of detecting his presence, her eyes locked on the new sun now rising high above the shifting horizon. He stepped closer, cautiously yet unable to halt his movement, and was standing beside her before she spoke a single word to him. "It's a new day." She did not turn to look at him, but continued staring out over the waves, motionless. "For some," he muttered without knowing why. To him the morning was like death, the end of love and companionship and the beginning of a lonely emptiness he had not known for the past two years, which had seemed so distant for so long and now became fresh and new and a wound that ached as harshly as if he had never known love. Now her head turned. "Every day is a new day," she said. "It is a question of what you choose to do with it. You can choose life, or you can choose death. But there are always new days." He didn't know why he was still standing there listening to this strange woman. Something in her eyes drew him in, something that banished the oddness of her words and sent the meaning straight through without the obstacle of language. There was a brightness there that spoke of tears long dried, of pain that echoed his own and had been conquered. There was a silver pentacle on a chain around her neck. He recalled vaguely that that meant something, but he couldn't think of what it was. "Why are you here?" he asked before he could stop himself. The next second he wished he had kept silent; it was none of his business, he didn't own this beach. But the words could not be unsaid. She seemed to intentionally make him stew in his own discomfort for an endless period of time before answering. "I came to cast a love spell," she finally said. Ah. She was one of those. It figured. Any number of women in the world he could've run into on that beach, and he had to get a weird witch chick. Although, he had to admit a love spell was sounding pretty good at that moment. Or maybe a "wake up and stop screwing up" spell. "Does that stuff really work?" He had to ask. "Does it matter?" she muttered. Now she took on a melancholy look, but only for a moment. "I didn't do it." She turned back to the rising sun and her face instantly brightened. "It's not important," she declared. "I am more than whose arm I'm hanging on. This day belongs to me as much as anyone else, and I can use it however I like without anyone else to see it." She turned to him. "I did a new-day spell instead, a ritual of recognizing a new period of freedom in my life." He couldn't ask her, but oh, he wanted to. He wanted that happiness he saw in her face, wanted it for himself. But his heart was so heavy; how could he ever reach the sun? She seemed to understand. Without a word from him she reached out and took his hand in hers. Her skin was cool and smooth, soothing, like the hand he had known and yet more comforting. She didn't even know him, but she cared. She cared about how he felt, and helping him rediscover himself. His girlfriend had never cared about that. They faced the sun together, strangers and friends at heart, one reaching up to pull the other after her as she climbed from the abyss, for no reason at all. "Just breathe." He wasn't certain if the words were spoken aloud, or if he merely thought them, but they were in her voice. The sunlight washed over him, and the sound of the rolling waves surrounded him, and he felt as if he were no longer on earth but trespassing through some form of heaven. He breathed. The scent of the water filled his lungs, mixed with flowers and grass and every manner of thing living and not living in the environment that surrounded them. The sun was hot on his face. "Visualize your problems being absorbed into the sun, burning away into nothing. The sun is taking your troubles from you, rising away with them and burning them into its light, burning them into ash. Imagine the weights you carry dissolving away, evaporating from you." He did. It was strangely easy to imagine this delicious warmth drawing the pain from his heavy heart and replacing it with light. He felt himself standing a little taller, breathing a little deeper, finding more room to stretch within his soul than he had for a long time. "This day is yours." She let go of his hand. He turned to her and smiled. Later, as he drove back to his apartment - once empty and lonely, now his comfortable home - he realized he had never asked the woman for her name or phone number, or flirted with her at all. It didn't matter. This piece of original fiction is the sole property of Dejana Talis.