Daily stories

The tide forgot to come in. I waved the tide tables at it, pointed to my watch and the sands and the mud. I looked up at the moon, pale and whole in the blue sky, still pulling at us. I can wait, I shouted at the sea. I've got all day. I was outwaited. The next day it came back, not crawling but crashing. I spat in a wave, but I didn't mean it. The tide took me in its arms and told me all about the pretty mermaid that had kept it out so long.

We believed her, at first: that dolphins were witches' creatures, unlucky to see; that to watch a sunset meant death by morning. We accepted that the beauty of a flower was in proportion to its toxicity, and that the same was true of the laughter of friends. But she pushed beyond her strength. She said that wholesome food and dreams should both be bitter, and brewed tea that fulfilled both oughts. We could not swallow it. We opened.

It was all mist and drizzle on the day I learned how much of the Earth is covered by sea. I sat by the cold shore I had been dragged away to two cold summers ago, and thought how much sense it made, that almost all the world was grey and empty like that. But the next morning's sun burned sky and sea blue, and I saw silver clouds in the water, and horizons where there had been fog, and the promise of islands.

I emerged from the hollow of the tree into a land I had long imagined. I saw at once it was all wrong: the mile-high cliffs, the million golden birds. I had known nothing of the scale of the world while I was in it. This place I had dreamed up could not keep itself together and still hold people like me. Yet there was the ground beneath my feet, firm and true, and blanketed with singing flowers.

Doreen printed an A4 sign for the cigarette bin: "Do not use, Birds Nesting". It was kind, and it was an excuse to use the laminator. Next year they were back again. Doreen thought she recognised one of last year's chicks, now laying. She persuaded management to install a second cigarette bin. The year after, both were occupied, and she suggested they buy nest boxes instead. Everyone had quit by then, anyway. They spent their breaks watching the birds.

As good as their word, the new council ripped out the bike lane, leaving a yawning crevasse down each side of the road, a wound in the skin of the world that none could see the bottom of. A child or two fell in; they should not have been playing near the road in any case. The voters were delighted. But, they asked after a week or two, where were they to park?

Something rattled in the vase when I picked it up, but the light wasn't good enough to see it down the neck. I had to buy it. Seven pounds! The man on the stall – the boy – was twitching at the cheeks trying not to laugh. When the deal was done I turned the vase over and shook it, right there over his trestle table, but nothing came. I laid it in the bottom of my shopping bag and swung it against the wall of the church, and then I went home. It's in the hallway now, waiting for me to look through the shards, to slice my thumb open searching, and decide whether what I find was worth the breaking.

We drifted between McDonald's and the university library. We were not hungry for fries or learning but they were the only places open 24 hours. At McDonald's the crew and the security guy started greeting us by name. They dropped in an extra nugget, another half-scoop of chips. At the library, there was nobody, and the lights went off everywhere we weren't, and our fingers were too greasy to handle all the books we didn't want to read.

There were new flags flying, slow-stitched and unique. You couldn't rally under them on a battlefield or dress in their colours – they were all the colours, made to clothe all who were in rags. On the third night, a boy with blood on his boots climbed the city gate and tied the old flag there with his bootlaces. But that flag was everyone's, too, and it soon grew flowers and feathers and threads in every shade.

Dr Popovik turned a little dial on the lectern, and slowly the clock wound back. It was a cruel trick, she knew, and self-defeating. She had her bit of fun, and the students got grumpier and harder to teach, and she reached for the dial again to keep herself going. She couldn't give it up. The looks on their faces, baffled, aghast, were just too much. And on the second row there was this girl, who saw ten more minutes left than she expected, and smiled.