Echo

“A blue shore, a beach, a deserted time after midday, a girl appearing from the sea… This has been nearly thirty years!
I was looking for pebbles on a wild beach. The day before it was stormy: waves, hissing, crawled across the beach up to the white walls of the seaside sanatorium. Now the sea has calmed, drawn within its bounds, exposing a wide strip of sand—chocolate-colored—with a blueish sheen, separated from the shore by a ridge of pebbles. That sand, damp and so firm that no footprints would leave an imprint, was scattered with little sugar-colored stones, green-blue rocks, smooth rounded bits of glass like candies that had been sucked on, dead crabs, and rotten seaweed emitting a sharp iodine smell. I knew that a big wave would bring valuable stones ashore, and patiently, step by step, I searched the sandbar and the fresh pile of pebbles.
— Hey, what are you doing sitting on my panties? — a thin voice called out.
I looked up. Above me stood a naked girl—thin, bony, with delicate arms and legs. Long wet hair stuck to her face; water flashed on her pale, almost untanned body, with gooseflesh from the cold…"