fisherman's daughter

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To me, the water was a mother's warm embrace, the gales a trusted friend, the sea-glass a treasured secret kept safe under my lumpy pillow. My own father, however, was the bane of me, and I grew to hate every second I had to hear his raspy voice, smell the cigarette smoke on his clothes, watch him leave me behind in our humble lighthouse, net of fish in calloused hand and a bag, the contents of which he would never show me, in the other.

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