After a few moments, you return the pebble to the beach. You travel light and can't afford whimsical sentimentality like this. One day someone will catch you unaware. It's not long before you can't even pick out the pebble you chose from beneath your feet.\n\nA gently bobbing gull screams at the sky. The sea is drawing your attention.\n\n[[Walk to the waters edge.]]

It's your first instinct to snatch up a pebble with a hole right through, rough on the inside where a sponge once lived. You recall holey stones are vessels for power, mythological trinkets you can see the Fae folk through.\n\nYou wonder if anyone can see you.\n\n[[Put the pebble in your pocket.]]\n[[Put the pebble back.]]\n[[Throw the pebble.]]

Your bare feet touch the shingle. It's as uncomfortable as it looks, but the stones are gently warmed. You pick your way to the ocean carefully, slipping slightly on wet chalk. A rush and the water laps over your feet, a shock despite the anticipation. The north sea still chills, even in summer. As the waves retreat, the smaller shingle slips and sucks beneath your toes.\n\n[[Go back to the land.]]\n[[Return to the ocean.]]

The cliffs towering behind you are blindingly white and speckled and striped with dark bands of flint. The beach is clumsy underfoot, and steep banks of sea tumbled pebbles stretch for miles. The tide is going out. Clear overhead, the sun reflects off of the sparkling sea before you and the chalk behind you. \n\n[[Look at the cliffs.]]\n[[Look at the ocean.]]\n[[Walk along the strandline.]]\n[[Pick up a pebble.]]

A meandering line is picked out across the beach in driftwood, wrack, shells and sea debris. The puffed light balls of whelk egg cases are caught by the gentle breeze. This was the height of the sea's reach, the closest the ocean got to the land. In some places the strandline kisses the foot of the cliff.\n\nOccasionally you spot the bones of cuttlefish, stripped of their soft bodies. There are also the empty egg cases called mermaid's purses, tendrils curling as they dry. \n\nNo mermaid you ever met required a purse.\n\n[[Pick up a pebble.]]\n[[Walk to the waters edge.]]\n[[Look at the cliffs.]]\n

Despite the call of the ocean, you still wish to pause on the beach for a little while. \n\nThe longer you stay, the more uncomfortable you feel. You clutch at your skin despite the warm rays, a precious gift you cannot afford to lose. A sudden cliff fall startles you, and you instinctively flee to the safety of the waters edge.\n\n[[Return to the ocean.]]

You step closer to the cliff face, the sunlight beating off the chalk so strong it almost glows. The stripes of flint are clearer now, twisted glassy imprints of ancient burrows. The cliff edge metres above looms over your head.\n\nA sudden creak, and a sharp crumble. A handful of fresh rocks tumble onto the shingle below.\n\nThe sea is more welcoming than the land, today.\n\n[[Walk along the strandline.]]\n[[Look at the ocean.]]\n[[Pick up a pebble.]]

You're drawn to a pebble unlike most of the others, rejecting the monochrome solidarity of the shingle by being a rich brown colour. Whether stained by the rust of long rotted ships or just a different kind of rock from another cliff you're not really sure. It would almost be more at home on a different beach. \n\nSometimes you wonder if you should learn more about rocks. Maybe you'd be able to tell what kind of stone it is just by looking.\n\nIt's almost as alone as you are.\n\n[[Put the pebble in your pocket.]]\n[[Put the pebble back.]]\n[[Throw the pebble.]]

Your fingers slip aroud a chalk pebble dotted with holes. Some of the holes pierce through the stone. As soft as chalk is, something formed these deliberate impressions. Turning the pebble over, a delicate shell falls from one of the holes. Thin and light, it almost blows away in the breeze. It has the shape of an angel wing.\n\nYou can just about fit your pinky finger into one of the holes. \n\n[[Put the pebble in your pocket.]]\n[[Put the pebble back.]]\n[[Throw the pebble.]]

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You peer into a rockpool ringed with limpet scours. Under the bright sun nothing seems to be present, only trails left where sea snails polished the chalk as they passed. You wonder how easily will someone notice your path once you leave.\n\nNothing stirs even after a few silent minutes. The sunlight dances on the ocean surface like a school of shimmering fish.\n\n[[Go back to the land.]]\n[[Approach the tide.]]

A surprisingly sentimental shape catches your eye, and you pick it out from the rest. An almost perfect heart shape. Turning it over, you see a pattern of five lines make from tiny dots on the other side. It's probably a fossil.\n\nAn extinct relative of the sea urchin, it spent its life crawling through sea bed silt with tube feet, eating fragments of algae. Now all that is left is a rocky impression, flint that filled the space where it died. \n\nStill, it looks rather pleasing.\n\n[[Put the pebble in your pocket.]]\n[[Put the pebble back.]]\n[[Throw the pebble.]]

Shingle crunching underneath you, you take a seat, watching the boat go by. Once you get used to it, the beach is not so uncomfortable after all. The smell of the spray and the rhythmic sound of the gently shushing waves is hypnotic. Your lips taste of salt. The gentle caress of the breeze...you could stay here all day, if you wanted.\n\n[[Pick up a pebble.]]\n[[Walk along the strandline.]]\n[[Walk to the waters edge.]]\n[[Look at the cliffs.]]\n

You reach out and run your fingers across the pebbles. Most have been weathered by years of waves tumbling them over and over. Some are more jagged, having been recently freed from the cliff face, revealing themselves for the first time in hundreds of thousands of years. They feel slightly tacky with dried sea spray.\n\nThere are all sorts of colours, shapes and sizes. There seems to be an unlimited amount of pebbles. Looking along the beach, as far as you can see, endless pebbles, no two the same. No one would notice if you picked one up.\n\nYou choose:\n\n[[a white one]]\n[[one with a hole in it]]\n[[one with /several/ holes in it]]\n[[a grey one]]\n[[a brown one]]\n[[a smooth round almost perfect ball]]\n[[one that fits just perfectly in your palm]]\n[[a heart shaped one]]

You're reminded of a game you played as a child - to find the roundest pebble you could. It'd occupy you for hours, trying to find something almost impossible, each new discovery slightly closer to perfection than the last.\n\nOn this beach, though, there are a few smooth round balls amongst the flints. White on the outside, with an almost faint suggestion of texture long worn away. Most are smaller than a golf ball.\n\nThe fossil sponge is pleasing to roll between your palms. \n\n[[Put the pebble in your pocket.]]\n[[Put the pebble back.]]\n[[Throw the pebble.]]

A quick overarm fling, and the pebble is gone, bouncing and skittering across the shingle. An optimistic gull lands in case the pebble was edible. The chances of you finding it again are slim to none.\n\nThe lapping waves rearrange the stones further. The whisper of rushing water draws your attention to the ocean.\n\n[[Walk to the waters edge.]]

You feel slightly foolish as you squirrel the pebble away in your sealskin. That will keep it safe for a while, but you know it'll probably get lost at your next destination. Perhaps another traveller will find it there, and the cycle will continue. You wonder if the pebble has been chosen before.\n\nLike the deep breath of a slumbering animal, the sound of the waves stirs your attention.\n\n[[Walk to the waters edge.]]\n

The sea is calm today. Few white crests can be seen on wave tops. On the horizon a small boat slowly traces the distance. There are a few seabirds, but you struggle to recall the difference between them. At least you remember that the large grey backed gulls screaming overhead are not really called seagulls. You don't remember the last time you saw a herring gull eat fish. \n\n[[Sit and watch the boat go by.]]\n[[Look at the cliffs.]]\n[[Walk along the strandline.]]\n[[Pick up a pebble.]]\n[[Walk to the waters edge.]]

You pick up any old greyish pebble, smooth in your hands and baked by the sun. Though not glassy, it is flint, the tool of humanity's distant ancestors. You could have picked any of the other grey pebbles, but this one has a comfortable weight in your palm, and soon your hand is covered in a light salty stickiness from handling it.\n\n[[Put the pebble in your pocket.]]\n[[Put the pebble back.]]\n[[Throw the pebble.]]

Amongst the swathe of grey, the odd white pebble stands out. They feel lighter, almost softer, than the other rocks. On this beach, it's definitely chalk. Soon your hands are covered in fine white dust. It almost feels as if you could squeeze too hard and crush it.\n\n[[Put the pebble in your pocket.]]\n[[Put the pebble back.]]\n[[Throw the pebble.]]

Staring at the blue horizon, you know it is time.\n\nAs soon as the water is deep enough, you wrap your skin around close and dive, suddenly once again able to slip through the water like you've known it forever. The warmth of the sun is replaced by thick blubber, but you don't miss it. There will always be another shoreline.\n\nYou kept your seal skin this time, selkie.

The cliff face is white chalk, deposited layers of tiny sea creatures one hundred million years ago. So much chalk formed then that the Cretaceous period was named after it. You're standing on what once would have been the sea bed. \n\nIn the sun the cliffs are almost blinding. They crumble so regularly that the chalk is always freshly exposed. \n\n[[Look at the ocean.]]\n[[Walk along the strandline.]]\n[[Pluck up the courage to get closer.]]\n[[Pick up a pebble.]]

The pebbles and chalk boulders get more slippery as you get closer to the water. Rockpools glint in the sun, temporarily isolated pockets of life waiting for the tide to return. Every rock is covered in limpets, whelks, periwinkles and other sea snails. You think you even saw a crab scuttling by.\n\n[[Take a peep at a rockpool.]]\n[[Approach the tide.]]\n[[Pick up a pebble.]]\nOn second thoughts...[[Walk along the strandline.]]

This little Twine game was made by Becklespinax in 2015-16.

There's something comforting about a stone that fits just right, even if the colour is uninspiring. Wrapping your fingers around it, you could take this piece of land anywhere and it would belong. But you're filled with wanderlust by nature, and it wouldn't be long before the stone no longer fits.\n\nYou feel your fingers mould to the shape the more you hold it.\n\n[[Put the pebble in your pocket.]]\n[[Put the pebble back.]]\n[[Throw the pebble.]]