[Dark Saint Alaick]

Not that she’d know what to do if love jumped up and smacked her on the nose. Love involved trust and she’d tried trusting a male before. It was highly overrated.

“It’s a crock,” she mumbled, trudging along Colva Beach, oblivious to the children building sand castles, the tourists splashing in the waves, the mouthwatering aromas of food vendors cooking sizzling prawns drenched in spicy masala.

She took this same route home every day and while she usually had a ready smile for the scruffy kids and stopped for a delicious seafood snack on occasion, today wasn’t one of those days. Today, she’d been promoted. To Housekeeping Manager. She should be ecstatic, proud. Instead, as hot sand insinuated its way between her toes—grainy, annoying—all she felt was the vise of predictability closing around her, squeezing the life out of every secret dream she’d ever had.

Hating the sting of futile tears, she deviated toward the shallows, eager to feel the soothing wash of warm Arabian Sea on her weary feet. Aunt Leela had this crazy notion that the feet centered the body. If your feet were happy, so were you. Yeah, right. If that were true, foot models would be in permanent nirvana and podiatrists gods. She’d grown up with Leela’s whacky beliefs, absorbed them, which probably explained why right now her feet burned and she was more disgruntled than ever.

Dreams were fruitless.

Dreams were bunkum.