A Meeting by the Lake - WWE 9/2

I wrote this as a semi-freewrite in response to the 9/2/09 Wednesday Writing Esential prompt      

    We used to meet on the shore of Lake Michigan, where the river slithers out of the forest, sweeps over a fallen trunk, washes over the sand, and is absorbed by the great body of water.  She walks toward me slowly and explores each footprint she leaves behind with her toes.  She knows the tide will eventually erase them and this makes her sad.  We smile, meekly.  “It’s beautiful tonight.” I say.  “Isn’t it always?” she replies and for a minute I think she’s not talking about the beach and setting sun.  We start walking.  She starts talking, telling me about her day.  The words she speaks come out in soft wisps and are dominated by the strong breeze.  Our hands are tightly entangled.  The sun is quickly descending so we quicken our pace to get to the point before it sets. 

                “What do you remember about the first time we met last month?” I whisper in her ear shielded from the wind.  She answers my goofy shirt.  “Do you believe it was just an accident of time and place?”  She pauses.  “I hope not.”  Then we stopped for we had reached the point.  We stood as two unmovable points among the rhythms of the sun, wind, and waves.  The waves crash higher and higher upon the rocks.  The only remnants of the sun are now pink tendrils that seem to reach for us from the horizon.  Above us an inky pool dotted with hazy starlight is forming.   “Sometimes I feel so helpless here,” I say, “with the lake so expansive, the swath of forest behind us, the brilliance of the sun, and the vast number of stars.”  She says she knows.  So I begin again, “I feel like I’m just going to get lost, absorbed, assimilated in the gigantic mechanisms of the universe.”   She puts her arms around my waist.  “That’s why we need each other, so we don’t get overtaken.”  And we stood like this for a few more hours, even when it was too dark to see the other, and stared up at the fixed points of light creating stellar geometries that seemed to subtlety illustrate what we were feeling.