He reached out a hand for her to grasp as she scrambled over the waist high rock wall. Soft was her landing on the other side as her bare feet touched down on spongy turf. Now at her back, the wall towered above her head like a lichen covered gray barrier to the town's curious eyes. Before her breathed a windswept cliff, padded with grasses and strewn with thistle, with a narrow twisty path that edged along the rocky face and out of sight down to the sea.
He tenderly led her across and down the steep path, glancing back at her from time to time with a smile and a warning to be mindful of the thistles. After some effort they found themselves far out on the tip end of a precipice that rose stoutly from a churning sea. Out of breath and laughing, the two lovers sank down onto the mossy ground. Sea birds soared and swooped above them, sometimes diving headlong into the water to disappear and then bob up to the surface again moments later with their catch in their beaks.
Far out on the distant horizon the haar was moving slowly toward a fleet of fishing vessels, one by one swallowing them up in the soft silence. He leaned across her resting form, kissing her lightly and her closed eyes fluttered open for only a moment then shut once more.
As the sound of the birds rose and fell and the rhythmic clang of the boat's bell in the distance blended with the crashing waves, they just lay there, side by side, hand in hand, their bodies melting into the landscape, as time left them behind and the wind carried their dreams across the waves with the receding tide.
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