Keeping watch over the Sound

I hear children’s cries. Of joy or pain? I don’t know, as I feel neither.

Mother calls, footsteps approach.

‘Mama, Mama, Johny fell!’

Mother hurries after child, through the sea-scented wind. They slip and slide down the granite slope to where the boy lies, his cries now whimpers.

Mother scoops him up, rough stone grazing her knuckles and struggles to get him inside. The door bangs. Infernal wind!

More cries as Mother cleans the cut.

‘Thankfully it is not bad this time,’ she mutters as she bandages his leg.

Finished, she takes a cup and pours some tea, then cradling her son on her knee, takes a sip and stares at the tumultuous sea.

‘What if it has been something serious? A broken leg? A cut so deep it needed a doctor to stitch? Or… you had tumbled right into the…’

A sob escapes.

She thumps the table with her fist. The boy starts.

‘Your father is never here! Always working!’ she shouts.

The boy begins to cry.

‘Why did I agree to this?’

 I hold those cries and mutters, and many besides, deep within my stones. As I keep watch over the Sound with vacant eyes.