The dusk stole in on day like a romantic Latin lover; calm, slow, sure.  The waves passionately embraced the shore.  The sands sloped into the water and gradually drowned... grain by infinitesimal grain.

And I, amidst the love, walked just to the side of the cool wet sand.  My feet fell on the dry powder and dug down.  Walking and listening to the soft rolling waves I pondered and stopped: looking behind me a thin trail of footprints led to some eternal horizon.  My origins were forgotten in the annals of sea and sand.  Other footprints lay to the side of mine, under mine, and in all patterns near mine... but I only saw the soft line of prints that became bolder and bolder as they approached like some invisible being chasing me down the halls of existence.

I resumed walking and thought of these marks-brief etches on an old watch crystal-and looked towards the ocean.  Far from the shore stood oil rigs that floated on water like mysterious ships, their shadows disappeared into infinity.  Ten proudly rested in a line amidst that wild ancient ocean: which the master, which the slave?

At the fall of the sun their electricity switched on so that they metamorphosed into hovering ships of crystalline light upon that wine dark water.

I felt my feet continue on top of the quiet sand and thought of tomorrow; the early morning that hides between the rays of the rising sun.  A tomorrow when, as far as one’s eyes could see, there would be no footprints on the sand; no remnants of people walking and children playing.  The morning and the light of day would violently shatter the glass reality of night and the crystalline ships would emerge as nothing more than oil rigs.