Blue.  The first thing that struck me about Nice was its blue.  The blue of its sea.  Deep, rich, silky, alluring blue.  I never knew blue could be warm.  The blue sea in the Baie des Anges.  Swathes of aquamarine and apatite, glimmering in the almost blinding golden light that kisses every nook and cranny of Nice.  A blue that converses with the cyan and cerulean sky.

As a child, I believed it was called La Baie des Anges because angels came to bathe here.  Only these anges weren’t angels, but a kind of small shark with fins that resembled angel wings.  They’d get caught up in fishing nets.  Not sharks enough to be be survivors, not angels enough to be kept safe, men had the better of them.  Anges, the fishermen called them.  Angelsharks. 

A blue sea that is also a bridge between two continents.  A treacherous bridge for those who, like the past anges are also caught up between two worlds.  In danger in one, unsafe in the other.  A blue of sorrow and hope and sorrow and hope.

A blue textured with stories.  A blue that shapeshifts into a myriad water dragons that ripple towards the shore and breathe out a flurry of mother-of-pearl foam onto the grey beach, before retreating with a loot of  shingles that ring as they are swept into the sea.  A ring like a giggle.

A blue you can talk to, because you know it knows so much more than you do, has secrets you could never fathom.  A blue you can confide in, bathe in, drink with your eyes, breathe with your mind.  A blue that cleanses every cell in your body and fills your soul with possibilities.  A blue with magic in its weave.

I stand at the edge of this blue, and tune into its rhythm.  To the waves that bubble towards my feet, to the sound of the backwash, with the tinkling pebbles.  I introduce myself politely, let the apatite and aquamarine dragons study me, decide if they wish to trust me.  Not wishing to be an empty-handed guest, I tell them my stories.  Then I wait.  Wait for the blue sea to speak to me.

Scribe Doll