The fifth day began with the smell of salt.
It came on the wind long before we saw the water, sharp and cold and nothing like the inland air we had breathed for weeks. The broken ridges we had been crossing began to fall away in long, uneven steps. The stone under our boots changed colour, growing paler and smoother, as if the land itself had been worn down by something stronger than rain.
By midday the horizon ahead had turned into a hard, straight line.
We reached the cliffs in the late afternoon.
