This morning the bones of the house had creaked and moaned and snapped with a ferociousness not heard before. Its flesh slapping at the restraining drywall and crying as the resident mice left for warmer climes. No one left here to feel winter coming.

She wanted to raise her hand.

She came once in November before buying the house and spent a week walking through the eight rooms in different patterns hearing conversations in the future that she knew would happen within them. She listened mainly to children in as they are the easiest to write scripts for. Friends said nice things about her when tucked away quietly in their rooms. Conversations about Scrabble words and where to buy fresh corn in July were repeated year after year but it was the children’s voices she listened for.

Most of the time the house was silent yet still, on occasion, it played a symphony of noises just for her. Snare drums predominated alongside the woodwinds, the floors often got up and danced at night. Rhumba, Tango and last, just before dawn, a Waltz for the lovely Poinsettia plant listlessly standing on a counter.

Sometimes the house lifted itself up and floated down to the ocean dipping its cement foundation into the sea, refreshing itself.

Like a skateboard on an invisible wave the house slipped into the sea with regularity and,but for the smell of salt on her pillow in the morning ,she never exactly knew where she was or where she had been.

Contentment was magic to her, and magic was contentment. It had been like this since she was a small child.

The luck of the Irish is to have dreams of the sea.