Once their was a boy who went to the beach and looked down at the waves.
He didn’t go, except to look, but when he saw the waves from the top of the cliff, when he saw them curling up and bowling up and cupping up and carrying long all the little surfers, then he went down to the water.
And the waves stopped.
So he walked down the bright, hot sand and got in place in the water, and crouched down to wait for the next wave, and then the rest of the little surfers came too.
“Move over,” said a bossy redhead, “this is our beach, and you don’t belong here!”
And so he was crowded over to the outside edge of possibility by her and all her little hunching friends, and so he was scrunched there, on the outer edge of feasibility.
Suddenly, from behind him, came another girl, softly, and she said, “But you, within the you of the quintessential you, you get the magic pebbles,” and she began to drop them into his open hands. And there were so many some fell out into his lap. They didn’t look magic.
Then the wave came, and almost waking, he refused to let the womping, woofing, warming water go, but clutching his pebbles, he took it in a whoosh, and riding up, came at last within the bowl inside the very lovely blue and arcing bowl, and swooping there, down and long he rode, and it was good to the very end of all that was prepared for him.
And he was happy.
Modern Fables and Antifables 