The waves.
The children.
A gull squawking near someone’s bag of chips.
I looked toward the flattened castle.
Then memories came back.
The pumpkins Simon carved even though they spoiled within days.
The blanket forts he assembled and tore down before bedtime.
The kites that snapped.
The flowers he planted while knowing winter would kill them.
I had assumed they were simply joyful things.
Perhaps they had also been lessons.
Noah stared at the flag still trapped between his fingers.
“Dad wasn’t sad when the ocean took the castles?”
Captain Reyes shook his head.
“He used to say the ocean was just taking its turn to admire them.”
Noah said nothing for a moment.
Then, for the first time that afternoon, he faced the water without recoiling.
“Can I keep the picture?”
“It’s yours, Buddy.”
Noah held the photograph gently, then gave it back to me so he could rise.
He walked toward the wet sand again.
Not to rebuild the whole kingdom.
Not all of it.
He crouched where the waves had softened the ground and pressed one handful of sand over another.
One tower.
Small.
Uneven.
Hardly higher than his shin.
People watched but kept their distance.
