The Magical Beach

It was a day much like any other, and we were at the beach, as is usual for us on any given day. Ballabus, he was not a prince to us yet, was playing on the beach with his two cousins, Djembi and Willow. They were gamboling about with their usual over-exuberance. They ran in and out of the river mouth that ran into the ocean. They chased each other and barked and splashed around like very happy dogs. 

 

All of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something in the shore break. I called my sister Haley and asked " Hey Hals, what do you think that is?" She looked over to where I was pointing. " I don't know, maybe it's a seal," she replied. But we don't get seals in our warm waters on the South Coast. We watched the movement coming from the shallow waves and saw Bossie stop playing with his canine cousins and start trotting over to the shoreline. His ears were stiff and alert and his head was cocked to the left. His expression was one of interested intent, for want of a better description. Whay happened next blew our minds. At first, we thought we were experiencing a group flashback or a stray hallucination. Out of the water rose a dome-shaped "rock". It was covered in seaweed and barnacles. 

What the @#$%?!!!!! We looked at each other, my sister and I, and began to giggle and panic at the same time. "Nooit," I said, "It looks like one of those old wartime bomb things that used to land on the beaches and blow up." "Ja" she replied. By now the three doggy cousins were barking their furry heads off and wagging their tails. Every time a wave broke over the foreign object, which was the size of a "Volksie", Bossie would howl and turn around twice just like he did when he was about to do a number two. 

The wind had picked up and our hair was whipping our faces and we could feel the spray of the ocean's waves on our faces but we stood still and said nothing. Right before our eyes, the rusty, shell-encrusted dome-shaped mystery object began to play music. This was just too much for us, we burst out laughing and I know I wanted to run, but I couldn't move. Haley started shouting for Willow and Djembi to come to her. Bossie though, was up on his back legs and dancing most gracefully to the sounds coming from the thing that was now right up on the beach. 

The music was something I had never heard, it was beautiful and hypnotic and melancholy, but joyful at the same time. The rhythm was not fast but it was not slow. I could not recognize the instruments that were producing the sounds. It was like a harmony sung by whales and sea turtles and all the frogs and birds of the universe. We stood mesmerized, we felt no fear, we were overcome by the need to start swaying and dancing wildly. We did!!!! Then as fast as it started it stopped. The foreign rock began to vibrate and cracked open. Smoke came out in puffs of colours, unimaginable even to the greatest painters and the smoke glittered with iridescent, sequin-like wisps of vanilla-scented candy-floss. And then without further ado, out came a little step ladder and three dogs, identical in appearance to Bossie, hopped down and started wagging their tails. Bossie ran over and there was much sniffing and tail wagging going down....