It started, what felt like a thousand years ago, on a beach.

Mind you, I use that word with considerable generosity; there were little tides to speak of, and the influence of the sea extended only a dozen meters inland, with what coastline there was counting just as much of its weight in pebbles and rocks as sand. It was the last place you'd want to spend a sunny day in-- Not that it was a sunny day by any stretch of the imagination. It was the end of winter, and the lamplight, half masked in the tall clouds, bore down without any warmth or kindness. I didn't want to be there.

I had to be, though, because I'd lost something important. And I don't just mean my dignity, though I'd absolutely lost that too. My hands digging into the rough ground, my fingernails chipped and filthy, clothes stained with the damp soil.

I was still in primary school back then, though approaching the tail end. Through a series of very dumb events that aren't worth recounting, I'd managed to offend some group of bullies, who'd been dedicatedly targeting me for some months in sequence.

Children at that age, just at the cusp of adolescence, can be quite novel in their cruelty. When someone is younger, they're incapable of the kind of focus to really torment someone - they might be spectacularly violent or mean for a day or two, but it's rare you'll see a long-term commitment. And when they're older, they'll usually have either started to develop a sense of empathy that keeps them from certain acts altogether, or at least an intuitive sense of how much they can get away with that keeps them restrained.

But between maybe nine and thirteen... Well, they've capable of being awful, but often haven't quite learned to what degree they can safely escalate it yet. So they'll push their luck until they get some kind of punishment. A backlash from teachers, a parent, some manner of authority figure. Like a stone hurtled into the air, trying to see how far it can soar before it's pulled inevitably back to the ground.

Back then, I was a very shy, closed-off child who didn't really know how to talk to others, and had few people, adult or child, who would make a fuss for the sake of my well-being.

So as it turned out, they discovered they could push it pretty far indeed.

Recently, they'd moved up to petty theft. They'd raided my bags at some point during the day, and stolen my logic engine, as well as some other sentimental errata. A little blonde-haired doll I brought to school, some nice pens. After the day was over, they'd told me they'd buried them in that tiny beach, in a rough area a few yards wide. There was some wider context for the 'joke', and they'd framed me as being a worm or a mole or something. When I'd been very young, more like six or seven, I'd dug a big hole in the garden behind the schoolhouse, though even I couldn't tell you why at this point. Because it had been so public, the story had stubbornly followed me.

Even today, there are few feelings I loathe more than the one I associated with that. Of being tied to a past I couldn't even see myself in anymore.

Anyway. They were telling a lie, obviously-- Or at least I assume so, since I never saw any of those objects again. Only an idiot would have fallen for it. But I needed the logic engine for my schoolwork, and the thought of telling the teacher I'd lost it tore into me with painful embarrassment. And the doll was something ferociously sentimental. I couldn't face a world where they were both just... Gone.

So, I dug. Scraping up little holes wherever I saw patches of things sticking out of the muddy, rocky sands, as the Great Lamp slowly fell towards the horizon.

At some point, a finger of mine got cut quite badly on a sharper fragment of stone. Even as I tried not to use it afterwards, the wound inevitably got sand in it, and stung with this dull, throbbing ache that filled me with a sense of total powerlessness. Of being so at the mercy of the world that I barely existed at all.

I started to cry, then. A pained, ungraceful blubbering, pained and throaty. But still, I dug. As the lamplight grew ever more orange, as the cut throbbed ever more terribly.

At some point, I heard footsteps approaching. At first, I ignored them, but then I realized they were light, and I suddenly felt afraid that it was one of the bullies, come back to mock me for my efforts or enact some further cruelty. I looked up.

It wasn't them.

"Ah..." She spoke hesitantly, though with obvious concern. "Are you okay?"

I blinked, stunned for a moment, only half about to see through murky eyes.

"What are you doing...?" She asked, when I didn't respond.

I'm not sure quite what happened in my brain at that moment. Something about a mix about lingering suspicion of this stranger, general fatigue and awkwardness, and the suddenly intense embarrassment about it all, about how real the painfulness of this all would feel if I admitted it to a stranger, led to my mind becoming a strange cocktail of impulses.

And then, without even seeing the words coming as they left my mouth, I suddenly told the worst lie in my entire life.

"A-ah, er. I'm f-fine," I said. "I'm just building a sandcastle."

She blinked, too. She looked at me. At my muddy cotton clothes, my fingers. The shallow hole at my knees, and all the others around me.

"Oh," she said.

A moment of silence passed between us. Then, she continued.

"Um... Would you like me to help?"