II

In summer she danced down to the seashore, gracefully skimming white sands and skirting the foamy water’s edge. From rock to rock she skipped and fairly flew like the seabirds that wheeled and skirled their song above her head. She danced with the noonday heat that shimmered on the sand and with the seaweed swaying tangled in the tide. She danced with the sunset as it splayed itself upon the face of the water, and with the stars that followed in its wake.

She danced and danced until she fell each night, exhausted but happy, into her bed. And each morning she woke feeling contented and whole.

“To dance with the foam and the sands, with the rocks and the birds, and with the sun as it sets at the world’s edge,” said the Voice, “is to dance with me. And yet I am not in the foam, nor am I in the sands; neither in the rocks nor in the song of the birds, nor yet in the beauty of the sunset.”

Again she asked, “Who then are you? And where are you to be found?”

But the answer was a command, a happy imperative, and a solemn invitation:

“Come, dance! Dance with me!”

And so she did.

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