Quaint Love Story

Edenton NC was the setting for the Coastal Bike Ride last week. It's a beautiful and quaint town, rich in history. And I’m interested in history, not that I'm a historian at all, but curious about the stories that must surround these elaborate homes from the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. I love a good story. And with old houses so prevalent in this quiet coastal town, my imagination went to work. Here's one imagined scene.

 …

Unseasonably warm weather arrived early that year along the coast of North Carolina. Wildflowers bloomed in the woods, and children played outside until the moon rose high, and cast a million glittering jewels down on the sea.

A woman wearing a black dress, climbed the ladder to the widow's walk, as she had every morning and evening for the past three years. She searched the skyline where it met the sea, hoping and waiting for the faintest glimmer of a ship on the horizon.

Her house sat a few yards from the rocky shore. One night, the woman's two young daughters played on the rocks, when they saw a dark haunting figure, a figure that washed in with the tide. Maybe a sea creature. They couldn't be sure in the darkness. But when the form lumbered toward them, they screamed, grabbed their skirts and ran to the house. The creature retched and groaned. The girls screamed louder, and ran faster. The figure collapsed on the rocks, as the girls reached their back porch.

“Mama, there's a monster.

“It tried to eat us.”

“A sea monster.”

The woman, hurried from the stairs, ran without her shawl, and stumbled out the door. She fled from the back porch, dashed across the yard.

“Lizzie.” A voice moaned from the rocks.

The woman lurched, grabbed her skirts, sobbing, falling on the creature, embracing him. Her long lost husband. Exhausted. Limp. Alive. Home. At last.