Claire stopped and picked up a piece of pink-tinged quartz. "Do you remember what you told me here? You said that if we stayed, we’d become like the stones—smoothed down until we were all exactly the same."
Claire dropped the quartz back onto the beach. It vanished instantly among millions of identical stones. On Chesil Beach
The sound of Chesil Beach is unlike any other in England. It is not the soft hiss of sand, but a rhythmic, grinding roar—thousands of tons of flint and chert being dragged back and forth by the Atlantic. Claire stopped and picked up a piece of pink-tinged quartz
Arthur looked at her. "I was wrong. We didn't stay, and look at us. We’re still jagged in all the wrong places." It vanished instantly among millions of identical stones
Would you prefer a story focusing on the (Edward and Florence) in an alternate timeline?
Arthur stood at the crest of the ridge, his boots sinking slightly into the shingle. To his left, the pebbles were the size of peas; miles to his right, at Portland, they would be as large as oranges. He checked his watch. It was July, nearly sixty years since the summer that had defined—and then erased—his future.