by Gene Wolfe Read by Ben Phillips Originally published in Orbit 7. Winter comes to water as well as land, though there are no leaves to fall. The waves that were a bright, hard blue yesterday under a fading sky today are green, opaque, and cold. If you are a boy not wanted in the house you walk the beach for hours, feeling the winter that has come in the night; sand blowing across your shoes, spray wetting the legs of your corduroys. You turn your back to the sea, and with the sharp end of a stick found half-buried, write in the wet sand Tackman Babcock.
Then you go home, knowing that behind you the Atlantic is destroying your work.
Rated R: Contains Adult Themes