The ocean waves wet her bare toes as Ella sat on the sand, staring out at the cresting waves as they broke apart twenty feet in front of her, spilling onto the shore and gently rolling up to greet her before slowly sliding away.
Above her, seagulls called to one another, arching and swirling, their white wings offset against the vivid azure sky, fading into the puffy clouds aloft as they twisted and turned without care. Ella’s mind went back to the little bird that used to visit her window sill and how she had longed to have the sort of freedom wings could bring. Now that she was no longer a prisoner in the attic, she was bound by a different sort of chains, the kind she’d inadvertently put on herself when she’d traded the attic for the tomb.
