It was an abandoned building, maybe a small, local natural history museum or even the house of someone fond of collections. There was no longer any roof, and really only one room was left standing. The floor was rotting, splintering hardwood resembling an ill-cared-for deck more than indoor parquet. The walls were white drywall, the missing door on the west side of the building opposite rows of tall windows facing east. The north and south walls were lined with dark wooden curio cabinets.

The curio shelves were lined with sand, each shelf a different color: white, yellow, brown, black. On the sand were hundreds of shells, starfish, urchins, bits of coral, and sea glass. The pastel colors of the shells and creatures almost glowed within the dark curios in this dark room whose ceiling was nothing more than a stormy sky.

The abandoned building was on a beach. Shells of other buildings were nearby, but none had any walls completely standing like this one. The sea had taken back the shore and burbled under the floor of the abandoned building, flooding the eastern quarter frothily from under the boards where the wall still held.

The sea pushed forward into the building hard with a gust of wind, and in the surface of the water, a face formed on the waves. It was a woman whose hair was the water, streaming out in all directions, disappearing into the froth which crusted on the wooden boards. Made entirely out of water, the tiny tips of waves made up her nose, her eyes, her lips, her ears. Little ripples of waves pulled apart opening her mouth so she could speak:

&#034My friends, you must hide now. Something is coming from the East, and I don&#039t know what it is.&#034

Inexplicably, the dried, frozen shells, urchins, starfish, and coral came to life in the curios. The doors of each sprag open and shelf after shelf pushed forward onto the floor, rivulets of sand coalescing in piles on the floor mixing white, yellow, brown, and black sand as the creatures moved to the holes in the floor to hide. Hermit crabs and snails sprang from inside conical shells, and oyesters and clams snapped open the lids of their own. Creatures without legs were pulled along by crabs to the openings where the sounds of splashing water were barely audible in the growing winds of the coming storm.

The face in the water watched over the process, her face ever changing with the small eddies and pull of the tide, yet she always remained the same, peaceful, beautiful woman. Reminding the small creatures to mind the turtles, who were coming, and asking that they make room for them, she suddenly lost substance and quickly became nothing more than the usual give and take of the current once again. She had heard something.

Though the building and beach had been deserted of all other life before, somehow from somewhere, a few humans arrived, drawn to the shelter of the four walls left in the town. Teenagers and children mostly, they crept up to the windows, standing in the water which was now halfway across the room. Being careful to not stand in front of the glass-less windows, they peered out, watching the ocean to the east for signs of movement. They didn&#039t have long to wait.

Large cruisers, aircraft carriers and gunships perforated the horizon like holes of dark grey in between large squares of greyish laundry sheets. The kids watched as they drew nearer, mesmerized by how the seemingly motionless ships could be rushing upon them when they apperaed to be standing still. The kids watched out the windows, oblivious to the water which was rising even higher in the room, reaching the far wall and now a foot deep in most places. They would have remained motionless still had the face in the water not sprung up three times as large in the middle of the room with a shriek, &#034Hide!&#034

All the teenagers and children ducked as bullets hailed down on the building making twin rows of holes big enough to put a fist through. The first volley hit no one. As drywall dust settled on their heads and on the surface of the silvery water, a teenage boy saw a creature still in the curio, still in its shell unable to move. As he got up to retrieve and save it, he passed by a window and was gunned down as another stream of bullets tore through what was left of the building. One by one the children fell. The face in the water fell away amidst the splashing which filled the room as bullets fell like the heavy raindrops all around them.

Hours later, the soldiers scoured the island. Of course, there was little to find because there had been little here before. One of the soldiers came across a toy treasure chest crammed between two rocks under a small cliff on the beach. It was filled with sea glass, sand, empty shells, and colorful rocks: the treasure of some young child. Elsewhere under the same cliff, they found a young girl of about six. Her long brown hair was matted and sandy. She looked half-wild, half-starved, and since she was the only living person they found, they took her with them to be looked after.

As the boats pulled away, a woman formed in the water swirling around the beach near the craggy cave where the girl had been found. The figure floated on her back like a swimmer resting in a pool, arms out, hair in a puddle around her head. The waves which peaked to form her legs, torso, head, arms, all began shrinking, lessening in magnitude the further the ships went until she and the ships were gone.

Flash forward twenty years. In an asylum, the same long-haired brunette plays African hand drums on the carefully manicured green lawn. She watches ants cross a sidewalk and merge paths with orderlies&#039 footsteps. The elusive they have decided that she must be institutionalized, that she simply cannot be normalized into the rest of society. She&#039s too wild, too free, too different to be allowed with normal people. Some blame the first attacks on the island which left it battered and nearly devoid of all life. Some blame the final attacks on the island which left it destroyed and devoid of all life. Whatever the cause, no one can break into her mind or figure her out.

But what she wants is simple, a way to watch life and travel and see everything. Her idea is to follow the footsteps of everything. She believes that you can cover the globe, unite it all by finding footsteps that lead one way, overlap with another set, follow that new set to another where they overlap, and continue on from there. From dinosaur fossil footprints to those left in the sand by seagulls, she wants to follow them all over and in that way find her place. She hopes that the footsteps will lead her home, lead her to where she belongs. Is it that crazy to want to know where to fit in?

And so she plays her drums and watches the ants go home.