STARSHINE,THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Four                                                                                              Part Fourteen


                   For three days I trekked the streets of Florence.  I absorbed its beauty, its domes, its towers and its colours.  The earthy yellow of its houses and the fiery red of its roves.  But its beauty made me feel all the more lost, all the more lonely.  I was aware of the emptiness around me, where there was no one to touch me, no one to whisper my name.  I sheltered from the heat in the cool of churches and art galleries.  I stood in wonder in front of many statues and paintings , but always their beauty merged with my loneliness.
                    On the evening of the third day I walked down a narrow street.  Washing hung between windows, way overhead, five stories high.  The buildings leaned inwards as they reached up to the ruby sky. I came out into an open piazza of long shadows and a deep orange light that came from the gold of the setting sun falling over the city's reds, yellows and browns.  At the far end there was a church raised up above the piazza with steps leading up to it on three sides.  I crossed the piazza and  climbed the steps.  A beggar was sitting there in the shadows, as I passed him I felt him move.  I walked into the church and knew that he was following me.  I could feel him behind me as I walked down the aisle to the alter. I was angry and a little frightened.  I had entered the church to be alone, to think, to clear and settle my mind and to reconcile myself with my loneliness.  I stiffened, kept my face forward and my back towards him.  I reached the end of the aisle and still he was behind me.  I grew impatient, I took some coins from my purse and turned harshly to offer them.  My anger turned to joy that pierced my heart.  He took the coins.  I felt his touch on my palm of my hand.  He wore a leather jerkin, his shirt and trousers were torn and his feet were bare.  His face was bearded and tanned.  His clear blue eyes looked into me and saw that I was no longer lost.  And I could see that in his wildness and raggedness he was no longer sad.  The woods and all the questions our lives had had to find and then answer were gone.
                        He carried a small bundle of muslin, knotted at the top.  He put the bundle on the floor and knelt down.  He untied the four corners and laid out the muslin to reveal the most beautiful shells; spined and smoothed, fanned and curled.  He looked at me and smiled, like a child, proud of his treasures.  I knelt down and gazed at their beauty, their weird shapes and colours of pale rainbow and speckled orange. 
                  "They're for you !  I took them from the ocean !"
                   At last the waiting was over.  His voice was beautiful, it did not hide from emotion, his voice was his heart, it unlocked my loneliness and made me whole.
                    The shells were for me, his thoughts had been with me and the seed I had treasured, all this time.  We had never been parted.  We were one and the same.
                  " What's your name ? " he asked.
                  "Clare." I said.