a bridge that leads to somewhere

Audra gave the alright to explore and Thorn charged forward, farther up the sandy path.  He paused, glancing back as Audra seemed to play with the sand.  She grabbed a clam out from the earth and Thorn's eyes widened.  “I’ve seen them before sometimes, but I think the ones I saw were dead.  They didn’t squirt any water at me.”  Jogging back to Audra he looks at the clam, brow knitting as his curious mind absorbs a new fact.

That was a strange creature indeed! Thorn made a zig-zag pattern along the bridge, peering into the water on one end, sniffing the sand along the middle, and then looking in the water on the other side.  He didn’t want to miss anything as he explored the spot.  “Aunt Bowen is amazing.  She told me some great stories about ships and being out actually on the ocean!  Can you imagine?  Being surrounded by water all around you?” For a kid who desired to see the world, such a notion had a high appeal to it.

“It’s weird isn’t it?” Thorn went on to point out, “how just this one bit of land stretches from one end to the other.  Why would just this little point have managed to get up high enough, or not sink as much as all the rest of the land?  Why be here at all?  Is fate a thing? Like, it was meant to be here for us to use to get from one land to another?” Endless questions seemed to come to his mind.  The pup paused partway in the sand, digging frantically when he saw a water squirt, feeling satisfaction as a clam flew out with some of the dirt.  Turning to look at it Thorn watched as it was trying to get back under the sand.

"Thorn Carpathius"