She walked for hours across the sedge-fringed shore, transfixed by the thought of a world after humans. The beach sank from high briar-covered dunes, past pockets of tidal pools, down into a glorious foreshore riddled with burrowing invertebrates and scoured by more kinds of shorebirds than she could name. At the bottom of the long, shallow run, fine sand churned in the breakers. The salt air tickled her lungs, and the wide expanse of wild shore, mile after unbroken mile, felt like a summons from her designer.
