story part 4

She could feel the saline breeze kick sand against her skin.  The soothing roll of the tide lulled in the background.  She felt a sharp prick in her side and twisted her torso to make way for a flood of newly-hatched sea turtles that scurried around her legs toward the sea and transformed in one elegant, fluid motion into miniature pelicans that rose in tandem and disappeared, winging over the ocean.  Her side seared with a sudden crippling pain.  And just as suddenly, she was back.  Back in Dakar under the vibrant awnings that filtered the beating sun but could not repel the heat of the street vendors' cooking, or the fire that market spices lit in the lining of her nose.  Back at the waterfall where (name) tugged at her hand, her ankle, and finally she toppled with a shriek to emerge laughing under the crystalline torrent of the falls.  Back to her crowd of warm-bodied women, surprise at their courage lurking just behind the resolve in their eyes as dust colored trucks rolled into the plaza and the women began to fall, bodies draping the ground gracefully, before her brain even registered the peppery outburst of gunfire.  Her side burned and she fell with faint surprise on a mattress of soft curves and headscarves.