Sally Jansen walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down.
The sun glinted merrily off the crashing waves below her as she, silent and unseeing, wiped a single tear from her clenched jawline just before it fell.
She’d been coming to this place every day for as long as she could remember. Or perhaps she'd simply forgotten a life before here. Every day after an avoided breakfast and a too late lunch. Later in the afternoon than was warm enough to be comfortable and just before the shadows after sunset made it difficult to find a way back.
Every day the same, regardless of the weather and despite the gulls that cried overhead, or the ships that called faintly in the misty distance to let passers-by know of a change of direction.
Every day the same, Sally Jansen would walk slowly to the cliff edge and sit for a while, calmly wiping a quiet tear from her face as she waited.
The routine was so reliably executed, it seemed as though she’d been waiting forever and a day without expectation of any kind of return. But in truth it had only been some years, or a bit more or less of them. A mere blip on the cosmic scanner, in the circle of life and time... and the ebb and flow of both as they came to pass and return.
Again and again.
After she'd wept, Sally Jansen would sit on the grass near the edge of the cliff for a while and wait some more.
After still more of a while after this, she would slowly push herself up with one hand, sighing heavily as though the weight of the whole world was holding her down and rise to stand again, wobbling ever so slightly as she lifted herself straight. As though the slightest breeze might blow her keen over.
When she had steadied herself, she would begin to put one foot in front of the other without much intention…and in doing so, Sally Jansen would slowly make her way home again with hardly a thought at all. Until the sun rose on another new day and she would find herself putting on her walking boots in the late afternoon and just before sunset.
Again.
Today was not unlike any other day.
As another liquid golden globe, magical in its brilliance, sank towards the endless shining horizon, Sally turned away from the sun and followed her long shadow as it beckoned her back to the darkened house near the edge of the cliff.
Nobody visited the house near the edge of the cliff anymore.
Well meaning but uninvited guests were infrequent enough for it to seem more like a house at the edge of the world, than a house near a small village, close to a cliff with unending views of the horizon.
Sally Jansen was a quiet sort of person and nobody in the village knew more than this. Nobody knew more of Sally than a few small facts.
That she came in to the market on a Wednesday, to stock up for the week ahead. That she always kept a good supply of candles. That she only very occasionally allowed herself a small cake, or neat packet of biscuits, when the weather was greyer and the wind more cold than usual.
Other than this her shopping list remained the same each market day. And Sally Jansen avoided the town, and the people in it, on every other day of the week.
Nobody knew where she had come from either.
Or what she was doing in the house at the edge of the world, near the cliff with the unending horizon. The folk in the town had long since stopped inviting her to events, social occasions or town hall meetings. And the neighbourly gifts of home made breads and bakes had dried up even a while back before then.
People had accepted the stranger as well as they could, had let things be and had gotten on with the business of living without further curiosity or resentment. Perhaps when life is more simple, people and their ways are able to remain so more easily as well.
Four long summers and three longer winters passed before the routine of Sally Jansen changed even slightly one bit. And when it did, Sally Jansen wasn’t even the first person to realise it had happened.
Or to fully understand how things eventually changed at all.
Part 1 of the 3 Part Fiction Series Scholar&Scribe / DreemPort Challenge
