Safe Harbor

4 - Maeve

4 - Maeve

Since I hit the trails, I had favored loose garments and cut my hair short. Less trouble that way, even if some predators had developed a sixth sense smelling the lone female hiker.

From up close, there was no doubt: my savior was a lean, fiftyish woman, with a sea-weathered face promoting her sharp cheekbones. Most of the strands creeping from the fisherman’s cap sun shone a fiery silver. A few darker strands revealed that her hair had once been some shade of brown.

When the distraction of this discovery wore off, my knee joint and I screamed in pain.

“Is there a pharmacy nearby?” I asked, hugging my knee.

She blinked, as my own soprano voice made my s*x rather obvious. Then she proffered a hand.

“Yeah, sure. Come on. And don’t touch your skin. The venom might reach your fingers.”

Her grip was as strong as a man’s when she hauled me up.

“Wow,” I said. “Do you work up?”

She smiled, one missing incisor short of perfect, a smile speaking of hard times, but also of pride and grit.

“If you call hauling sails and carrying rolls of net for my cousin a workout, yes.”

Standing, I found the pain a little more bearable.

“Your cousin’s a fisherman?”

Not the smartest question, but any conversation helped to forget my knee.

She pointed at the harbor. The postcard-cute boat was approaching the marina beside the big pier.

“There. He’s coming ashore.”

“Nice color,” I said, decorator mode on.

She made a face.

“Of all the ugly, horrid, look-at-me statements! The bumbling i***t won a few hundreds at the lottery, decided to invest in cosmetic changes instead of paying his mortgage. He had the paint job done before I could say anything.”

“Hm,” I commented, switching off decorator mode.

I noticed a big sign resting on two sticks, maybe a hundred meters from our position.

The small letters Safe Harbor City Safety Committee sat upon tall black caps:

SWIMMING

STRICTLY

FORBIDDEN

Technically, I was not swimming, but the jellyfish sting had driven the point home. She pointed in the other direction.

“There is a similar one at the end of the trail.”

Too eager for a dip in the water, I had missed the sign, along with the village’s name.

“So no one can enjoy the water.”

She stared at the beach as if it was an enemy.

“Jellyfish have multiplied for six years. Tourism is dropping, as the catch sizes. Overfishing, pollution, radio waves, big pharma, everyone has theories about what killed off the fishes.”

I wondered if the little blue boat had caught anything. Time to lighten the mood.

“Well, at least, there is a Safety Committee overseeing things,” I said.

She snorted.

“What? You don’t approve of the Committee?”

She flashed her gap-toothed smile.

“Ye’re looking at the full Safe Harbor Safety Committee!”