Unfamiliar familiarity

I sat there, next to the fire, watching it dance and prance, little orange flames flicking and licking the wood, the occasional blue or green one from some unknown chemical (even though I ordered it from a so-called ‘green’ supplier… tsk.) It was entrancing, as always, and I felt even more detached than I had been before I started watching it. The room was full of people. Familiar, lovely, people, in my house, but somehow, tonight, it all seemed unfamiliar, like I was somewhere else.

I felt like a smooth, round pebble, just in from the shore. Waves of noise washed over me, some not even budging me from my little burrow in the fine, wet sand, others jolting me about, rushing me forward, dropping me, allowing me to burrow again into the sand. There was a beach at the Seaside Town I spent all my childhood holidays and many happy varsity weekends on - a place where often one could walk for miles along the flat sand, dunes to the left, ocean to the right, and see nobody but a couple of birds and some friendly welks. I was there.