There had been a recent storm and that usually meant driftwood on the beach and the shale under the East Cliff, which for the poorest people of Whitby meant free fuel. Maggie was out on the beach with a wicker basket, a little girl tied on her back, and a little boy walking beside her. Both of them were stooping down occasionally when they found a piece of wood and put it in the basket. They would dry it near the fire, and then her husband James would chop it up and they'd store it away. It didn't give a pleasant type of fire and it was harder to manage than coal, but it would keep them warm on cold and wet days and heated water and that was all they asked for. 

Maggie stopped and rose up straight when she saw something in the water. Other fish lasses had ceased their work as well and were watching. She put her hand over her brow trying to get a better view. Was that a person on a board? Had someone survived a ship wreck, drifting all the way to shore. She had to warn the life brigade!

Lailani was severely disappointed with the waves of England if one could even call them that. The former aristocrat had tadken notice of the driftwood along the beach when she had first arrived at the beach. However for the likes of her, at least it didn’t occur to her that they could be a source of fuel.. at least not in the moment that she had been looking out to the water trying to decide if it was even worth riding out to the water earlier.

Now that Lailani had been out in the water for a while now. Finally she simply sat up on her surfboard with a sigh. “These waters leave much to be desired.” The raven haired woman mumbled to the board while smelling the salty seawater air as she began to swim back to the land. The Lailani raised a brow as she approached the sand. Shifting her body off the board to begin walk onto the sand, tucking the board under her right armpit as she walked through the water. A big smile spread across Lailani face as she spotted a little one beside a woman. “He is a little cherub!” Giving a wave with her left hand at the little fella from afar as she hollered those words.

The entire experience seemed surreal to Maggie. The person - a woman, she could now tell - managed to make it to land, and addressed her, or at least it seemed she was talking to Maggie, like nothing was going on. She looked foreign, which made it more likely that she had come from a ship. There were people from all over working and traveling out on the North Sea. She may have come from a wrecked ship indeed. And yet she seemed all happy and healthy.

Maggie put a hand on her little John's shoulder and pulled him a little closer. The boy took hold of his mother's skirt and hid his little round face in it. Yet Maggie was worried about the stranger. She took a few steps closer, John running along, and hiding his face again when she stopped. "Y'alright?!" she called out.

“Am I alright?” she restated the other woman’s statement as she looked at her wood surfboard and then at the woman and child. “Oh Yes I am fine. Just doing some he’e nalu. It is wonderful exercise” she said gesturing with the traditional wooden surfboard.

"Ye mean to say... ye went in there on purpose?" Maggie asked perplexed. She knew that on hot days tourists might risk a swim, but they never went out far and she had never seen one on a board before. But then again, she had never heard the word the woman used before. For people like her, going into the sea was done out of necessity - or well, her husband, father and brothers, and one day John, going out to sea was. There was always some risk attached to it, especially on days like this, when the post-storm winds still blew up fierce waves (they looked fierce in Maggie's eyes) and made the currents unpredictable and the air so much colder.