An emerald swim suit, bright green eyes, long red hair, and a smattering of freckles made up the godly visage of the stranger. You go into a panic, struggling against the vice-like grip of her toes; if being stepped on by one of your friends was bad, being stepped on by a complete stranger was even worse.
You're helpless, just another grain of sand that stuck to the pale flesh of her toes.
The moment of peace ends, and with a rush of sun-baked air her foot goes soaring across the beach. You scream, sand blasted as her foot soars high, higher, and higher still, before speeding down towards the ground. You're rocked as she lands heel first, nearly losing your lunch as her toes follow suit, arcing towards the warm surface. They impact, plunging below; you choke back another wail as sand rushes in, burying you and her toes as she presses her foot down. You recall this, the familiar cluntching of toes as they wriggling in the sand, grinding you between towers of skin and boulders of rock and silicate.
Her foot rises once more, shedding waterfalls of sand as it bursts free from the earth. You find yourself immobilized, caked between a hard layer of sand and the unrelenting skin that curved beneath her fourth toe. Helpless, you screw your eyes shut and wait to die as she begins to step forward yet again.
Shannon couldn't understand people who wore shoes on the beach. The sandy foot experience was basically the whole point of the trip to the ocean! She relished every step, worming her toes in the warm ground, feeling the particles shift and clump and stick at her whim. She liked to think she could sense the Earth's very essence like this.
She walked by a group of three young women on her way back to her group; distracted by them she failed to notice Tobi's small form among the sand, though to be fair she likely wouldn't have seen him anyway. He stuck to her skin like one of the thousands of grains of sand, unnoticed as Shannon strolled along the beach. She moved slow, letting the ground press into her as she stepped, unaware of how this tormented the poor man at her feet. Had she known that each step popped Tobi's ears, that each wriggle of her toes scraped away more of Tobi's skin, that every grain of sand that she clutched at threatened to smush Tobi, she likely would have helped him. She didn't, however, so she carried on, step by grueling step, until she reached her spot and flopped back on her beach towel.
Maybe five yards away were two young girls, half her age: Katrielle and Elizabeth. Kat and Liz were sisters, and Shannon was their babysitter. Their mom was stinking rich, so Shannon was paid quite a fair bit to take them to the beach and keep an eye on them. It wasn't a bad gig, either, since the girls were just the sweetest things, without a mean bone in their bodies.
Leaning back on the towel, Shannon crossed her feet at her ankles; a shower of sand poured off them onto the fabric, including the poor, abused Tobi. Still unaware of his existance, she closed her eyes. The girls were fine, she had decided, so maybe she could just catch a quick nap.
You, however, had decided to:
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