Return
Elizabeth Guilt
The champagne bubbles danced up to the rim. The glass, too rainbow-beautiful to remember it had once been blasted from soda and sand, sparkled in the low light. The table rocked gently—so gently—with the waves as the man raised the glass and silently toasted his lover.
When the last mint was gone and the coffee cold, the tired steward cleared away the plates and the knives. Hurrying to finish, he piled too many things on the tray and the glass went crashing to the floor.
In a moment the delicate, slender flute had become rubbish. The steward swept up the pieces and tipped them over the side without a second thought.
The wild currents took the shards and threw them against rocks, and shells, and corals. The sharp edges blurred and smoothed, and the gleaming crystal dulled in the saltwater.
The once-beautiful glass swirled the length of the sea, no longer celebrated, just another tiny fragment tumbled in the waves.
And one day, one day, the water will release it. A tide will fling it inland and cast it somewhere on a beach. And the glass will nestle among the grains of sand, and it will whisper to them:
“Do you remember me?”
Elizabeth Guilt lives in London, UK, where history lurks alongside plate glass office buildings, and stories spring out of the street names. Her fiction has appeared most recently in Pseudopod, Escape Pod, and Cosmic Horror Monthly. You can find her at https://www.elizabethguilt.com, or on X/Twitter @elizabethguilt.