The waves gently lapped at my feet, almost as if they were welcoming the blue painted digits into the water. And so slowly, almost hesitantly although I’m sure I didn’t look like it, I ventured out. Stepping into the immaculately blank water, bumps ran up and down my limps, legs exposed to the biting breezes of the ocean wind. But there was nowhere else I would have rather been, taking few short steps after each other, being careful not to become entrapped by the seaweed that floated around aimlessly. The tide was beginning to come back into its rightful residence, rising slowly as the hot island beams rained down upon the throng of students taking up home on the rocky cliffs. Few others ventured out into the pale blue whirlpool like I did, stooping down moment and moment again to dig in the wet crystal sand for a speck of white that caught my eye. Sometimes it was nothing, a trick of the sun, a trick of the water, a trick of my mind. Others though, produced shell tops worn smooth with the lapping of time, edges still managing to remain sharp enough to cut fingertips and drop blood into the ocean. Blood that swirls with the moving currents for just a second, and in the blink of an eye disperses on its new journey. The noise and calamity of being on tour for days finally fades fully from the senses, and now it’s just the sound of the waves in the distance breaking upon the out cliffs with a lighthouse that take the rest of the world away. Back and forth, back and forth I walk through the shallows, and then the deeper water, staining my rolled up jeans a dark streaking blue as the water continues to rise to meet me. Weaving a path around the floating ships of decaying seaweed, a tentacle reaches out, if to only momentarily sent me into convulsions as I flail my leg to remove it. But no one seems to notice, as I stalk out into the deeper, more faultless water to calm my nerves. A fragmented collection of shells still preside in my grasp, the lesser beautiful ones to many with their daubs of imperfection, but stunning works of art and history fused none the less. Finally, the water begins to reach its pinnacle, lapping at the edges of wet jeans eagerly. Gently, as to not disturb anything still buried under the sand, my feet travel a distance around the seaweed; the green algae swelling at the edge were two worlds of nature meet. With a pause, temptation to claim the oceans treasures for myself crests, but then drifts away as the seaweed is doing as I look out upon the endless profusion for a moment. Bending down quickly, I slip each back into the cold ocean, the waves pulling each into their protective grasp once more. And with a final dazzling splash to goodbye, I return to my life as a guitarist on tour, incognizant of the single angel shell tucked into the back pocket of my salt stained jeans.