Blue Dawn

Her dark smooth skin gleams silver blue in the moonlight. She has bathed in the little pool behind the hut. She wraps her nakedness quickly and binds her neat cornrow hair. Once she is dry, she retrieves her warming cup, nurses it, sipping occasionally and gazes out to sea from the little headland, swaddled against the chill night air. It will be dawn soon. The first glow is beginning to kiss the horizon in the East. The Baby will awake. The boat will land on the little shingle beach. The bones will tumble. And her life will never be the same again.