Sea Haven 01 - Water Bound

all twenty-four feet of her. Everything on her boat was in impeccable condition. No one touched her equipment but her. She even did her own welding, converting the design of the davit to make it easier to haul her nets on board.
    The river was calm and the boat rocked gently against the bumpers.
    There was a soothing mixture of sounds, water lapping and birds calling back and forth. There was one lone camper trailer in the park and no one in sight. The harbor was nearly deserted. She went through all her checks and started the engine. Rikki untied the lines and cast off. A familiar eagerness raced through her veins as she pushed the Sea Gypsy from her dock.
    For Rikki, no feeling on earth matched the thrill of standing on the deck of her boat with the powerful engine, a 454 MerCruiser with a Bravo Three sterndrive and two stainless steel propellers, rumbling under her feet and the river stretching out in front of her like a wide blue path. The wooden bridge spanning the river, with a sandbar and rocks on either side, was her gateway to the ocean. The channel was narrow and impassable in low tide or heavy swells. With the wind on her face, she maneuvered the boat out of its slip and kept a low throttle as she moved along the channel. The sandbar to her right could present problems, and she kept to the center as the Sea Gypsy swept around the curve to enter the actual sea.
    Double-crested cormorants vied for space on the closest sea stack, a small island made of rock where the birds nested or rested. She sent them a smile as she judged her mistress. She never fully trusted the weather reports or tide books—she had to see for herself exactly what mood the ocean was in. Sometimes, in the protection of the harbor, the sea felt and looked calm, but the waters beyond the land mass could betray her angry mood. Today, the ocean was calm, the water smooth and glistening.
    The Sea Gypsy swept out into open water and Rikki relaxed completely. This was her world, the one place she was truly comfortable.
    Here, she knew the rules, the dangers, and understood them in a way she could never understand social situations and human interactions. As the boat rushed over the water, the sky overhead was blue and clear, the surface below as smooth as the California coast ever managed to be. She had a great engine, built for speed—a gift from her sisters and one she could never begin to thank them for.
    She rushed passed caves, sea stacks and cliffs—from here the coast appeared a different world altogether. Pelicans, cormorants and osprey shared the skies with seagulls, sometimes diving deep, their bodies sleek and 27

    streamlined as they plummeted into the depths after fish. Little heads popped up here and there as seals surfaced close to shore, hunting for a meal. Two seals played together somersaulting over and over in the water.
    Spray burst up the cliffs in a display of power as the sea met land. She lifted her face to the salt air, smiling at the touch of water on her face. She began to sing, one hand weaving a dancing pattern in the air as she maneuvered the boat with the other. Singing was almost a compulsion, each time she found herself alone where no one could see or hear her. An invitation. A language of love. The notes skipped over the surface to the sides of her boat as it rushed over the water.
    Tiny columns began to form, sparkling tubes that danced over the surface like mini cyclones. The sun gleamed through them, lending them colors as they twisted and turned gracefully. Some rose high, leaping above the boat in thin rainbows to form an archway. Laughing, Rikki shot through it, the wind and water on her face and ruffling her hair like fingers.
    She played with the water, out there in the safest place she knew, with the shore in the distance and the water leaping all around her boat. Water was drawn to her in some mysterious way she didn’t understand, coming when she beckoned, saving her life numerous times, making her feel at peace when everything and everyone she loved had been taken from her.
    Under her direction the water plasticized, forming shapes. The joy bursting through her there on the water where she was so alive could never be duplicated on shore where, for her, there was only vulnerability and emptiness.
    She anchored the Sea Gypsy just off the shelf but gave herself plenty of scope just in case a large wave did come at her out of nowhere. She checked her equipment a final time. Eagerness rose inside