“Daddy, is that a mountain?” A little girl pointed to the massive wind-created landform ahead.
“It’s a sand dune, Biscuit. Wanna go check it out?”
“Yay!”
He lifted her up and placed her on his shoulders. Her sand-covered feet dangled over them, dusting his bare chest with tiny particles.
“How’d it get there?”
“The wind, Sweetheart. It blew sand from the waters’ edge and it piled up and made these hills.” The pair began their ascent.
“We’re so high, Daddy!”
The burn in his legs could attest to that. He pulled her down into a squat. “Look there. You can see for miles.”
“All the way to end of the ocean,” she squealed. “Why does it look different up here?”
“Perspective.”
“What’s ‘pospectif, Daddy?”
He smiled at her version of the big word. “It’s like a different view. Sometimes changing your perspective can change the way things look.”
“Like make it better?”
“Usually,” he said. “If something doesn’t look or feel right, a new perspective can help.”
“The beach was pretty down there, but it’s prettier up here, huh?”
He squeezed his daughter tight. All had felt like despair two hours before, but she had begged for the beach. The paperwork on his desk, all of which foretold disaster, nagged him, but he couldn’t resist her pleading eyes. Here, on the sand dune, he realized the power of the wind to change the landscape. And he felt that wind at his back now—all because of his little girl.
Entry for a Flash Fiction contest sponsored by IndiesUnlimited. com. Rules: based on the photo by KS Brooks, write a flash fiction story of 250 words or less. Because of an earlier win in January 2018, this entry is only for an Editors' Choice award not the weekly reader's pick.