Lost In The Tide

“I’m leaving with Olive, come if you wanna!” June shouted into her little cottage.

“Okay, coming!” replied Asa, her younger brother.

June, with a ruffled pale yellow dress and a white sun hat, led her bunny out into the evening sun. Olive’s fur was blonde, with some white spots, and little shiny black eyes. The moment June had laid her eyes on the little rabbit, she decided it was hers.

“Wait up!” shouted Asa while June and Olive walked to the seaside, with paint, brushes, a palette and an easel in June’s arms.

The sun was half of its way down the sky, smearing orange and yellow across it’s pink canvas. Lavender and indigo clouds dotted the sky, with the bottoms highlighted by the sun’s light. All these colours were reflected onto the pale sand below, so that was where June set up her canvas.

“I said wait up!” Asa shouted again as June gazed at the easel from different angles and adjusted it appropriately.

“Painting waits for no one,” responded his sister, and Olive jumped up in agreement.

“I brought Olive her favourite toy,” Asa said, holding out a coloured ball of rope that Olive immediately started leaping at.

“She’ll have to pose for me first.”

“Pose? Is she a supermodel or something?”

“Haven’t you heard of ‘en plein air’?”

“I have really no idea what you are talking about,” Asa said, taunting Olive with the toy.

“Ah, nevermind. Can you move Olive over there so I can prepare my paint?”

“Fine,” Asa muttered, leading Olive away.

June had brought only the necessary colours: blue, red, yellow, white and black. Those were the colours she had, and the only ones she would need, really. It would take a lot of mixing, but mixing paint was one of her favourite things to do, creating colours that you hadn’t seen before with your own very hands.

June squeezed some red and blue out on her palette, to make the dark violet that spanned the sky under all the other colours. She brushed it lightly all over the canvas, and then mixed a pale orange to blend into the horizon line. June added white as the transition colour and blended a smooth gradient, as Asa teased Olive with, “Get the ball! Get the ball!”

June now added some yellow right atop the horizon, where the imaginary sun would rest. She squirted some white and a touch of red, making a pink highlight for the clouds. Adding white to the violet she’d used earlier, she was about to make a cloud when a fluffy lump landed on her arm, dragging the lilac across the painting.

“Olive!”

The bunny jumped off quickly and knelt at June’s feet, paws up at her chest pleadingly.

“Asa, you were supposed to keep her away until I needed her!” June shouted.

Asa winced and said, “Um, I might’ve thrown the ball at you by accident and Olive went after it.”

“Well, maybe you should practice your throwing skills before taking care of a bunny!”

Asa didn’t respond and just picked up the ball at June’s feet. With a glare from his sister, Asa led the little bunny away from the painting, which June now had to fix up.

“Ugh, brothers…” murmured June as she attempted to repaint the gradient with the leftover paint from earlier. After a few minutes there wasn’t any dragged paint across the sky, even if it didn’t look as good as before, so June moved on.

Dabbing with the lavender she made, June created the clouds that added embellishment to the sky. She then highlighted them with the pink, and after it had partly dried, used her brush to drag the clouds out a bit, making them look wispy.

Stepping back to admire the sunset she’d recreated, June heard Asa shout, “No Olive! No!”

She looked to her left and saw Olive skipping into the sea, splashing water onto her blonde fur.

“OLIVE!”

The bunny looked at June, who was running towards her, and stared at June as she picked her up.

“Don’t go out there Olive. It’s dangerous,” whispered June, looking into Olive’s glossy, curious eyes. She set her pet down and walked back to her painting, while Asa scolded Olive for trying such a thing.

Back to her painting, June mixed a bit of red, blue and yellow to create a tan colour. She added white to make the muted sand colour and applied it to the bottom of the canvas. She added a bit more yellow and red to make the paint darker, and then shaded the sand with a stiff horsehair brush.

“Olive!”

June looked back to her left and saw Olive skidding to a stop at the shore of the beach, with Asa running behind.

“Olive…” June began as she ran to her bunny and picked her up. “You do know why it’s dangerous to go out there?”

Olive just stared back eccentrically. 

June sighed. “If you go out there, Olive, you might get pulled in by the riptide. The riptide appears out of nowhere and just rips you into the ocean, pulling you under. If the riptide pulls you under, you won’t come back. Please, please don’t go into the ocean. ”

Olive blinked with some or another understanding, and trotted back to Asa orphically.

Almost time to get Olive, thought June as she dotted the bottoms of the clouds with a lighter pink. Then, after combining yellow and orange from before, she added little clouds near the horizon line, around where the sun would be. 

June stepped back again, looking for imperfections. That cloud looks a bit too dark, she thought, so she painted over a cloud that was on the right side of the painting with lavender. June hummed along with the lapping waves as she shaded the clouds, using more pastel colours than before. She thought she might’ve heard someone calling her name, but she decided it was her imagination.

Straining her neck back again to check, June thought, Now the highlights look too bright. She darkened the pink with a touch more red, and then reapplied the highlights with the new colour. 

The sun now was perched right at the horizon line, just like in June’s painting. She thought the calling for her had gotten louder, but she just ignored it.

Satisfied with her clouds, June was about to call Asa for Olive when she heard something. Splashing. Not the waves lapping, that sound was normal, but a more distinct splash.

“NO!”

June looked up from her painting to the waves in front of her and saw a little lump splashing in the water.

“OLIVE!”

Asa and June ran, ran, ran into the water, trying to get to Olive, but then they paused.

A wave, which had appeared out of nowhere, towered above the little bunny and crashed down, engulfing her in its waves. When the waves pulled back, the pair only saw colourful waves peering back at them.

"No. No. She can't be gone," said June, sobbing. "She can't be."

Asa gulped and opened and closed his mouth, but couldn't push out the slippery words in his throat.

They now leaned against a rocky cliff, where they could see their cottage and the beach and June’s painting. They cried, then hugged, then stared at the sky as the sun started disappearing under the surf.

“I thought…” sniffed June, “that it was my imagination...I didn’t know it was you...I’m so sorry Asa...I’m sorry…” She leaned against her brother’s shoulder for reassurance.

“I should’ve moved faster,” Asa said, “but I just stood and watched. I should’ve moved.”

“There were so many things we should’ve done,” June said. “So many things.”

Asa nodded and the two settled in a silence that was not awkward, but one that gave off a feeling of kenopsia.

After a while, June stood up. “I’ll collect my painting stuff now.”

Asa nodded again.

He watched her dress billow as she folded up her easel and the unfinished painting. As her eyes looked so solemn when she put her brushes among the palette, not caring that they got smothered in paint. As she walked slowly back to Asa with her things when a little tear dripped down her cheek and sat back down next to him.

They didn’t talk. Not until the sky and the waves looked like sisters or brothers, cousins or nieces, until the sky and waves looked similar as family.

“She was so...so cute. I remembered when we got her, the first thing I thought when I saw her was, ‘she’s so cute’,” said June with a quiet sigh, her twinkling eyes resembling the stars. They sat in a short silence as night blanketed the sky, and neither of them could tell the waves and sky apart as they headed home.