After breakfast at Gloria's, an assignment

Mr. Apotienne sat on his favorite pondering rock.  He was writing in his reporter's notebook using a non-skipping, non-globbing gel pen with dark blue ink.  The Reading Man had not been a reporter, not as a paying job, for some years yet found that particular size and shape of notebook suited him.   It was familiar and he was more inclined to jot thoughts in it than some upstart journal, given to him with the best intentions by friends who knew him, but not quite well enough.

Unseen forces, one of the names he used for what he believed was intuition or a pipeline to greater wisdom than his own conscious thought, arrived often to address Mr. Apotienne, to steer him in a particular direction for purposes he would later come to understand.  Or not.  Regardless, he knew to trust the guidance and to trust whatever came of it.  On this morning, having seen Mr. Guscott into his rental car, expressed thanks to Gloria for a most sociable breakfast and taken half his coastal walk, he had been urged to sit and consider, pen in hand, two topics:  treasure and secrets.  They sounded like elements from a fairy tale, a Hardy Boys mystery or any day he could name.   The Reading Man did not keep his own secrets for he knew the cost, the energy required to prevent their discovery.  There was not a scene from his past which he could recall that was not known to someone.  He was, however, a repository for the secrets of others, not an endless number of them but enough so there was at times an awareness of burden.  It would not surprise him to see one or more of these entrusted secrets break free of his hold and run into the street like frightened dogs, creating tragedy and havoc, leaving him to try and tidy up, then apologize.

A possibility for the treasure aspect came to him at once.  He would retrace his steps along the beach road, then return along the high tide line.  The number that fixed in his mind was three.  He sought three objects which he would know on sight but couldn't guess ahead of time what they might be.  No reason for gathering them had yet been revealed.  Whether or not the secrets and the treasure (or treasures, should there be more than one quest) had an obvious connection, he didn't know and stretched his neck and shoulders, wanting to keep from making attachments where none should exist.  Putting the notebook and pen away, he wondered if the three treasures could be accessed with equipment - his hands - currently available.  He wondered if the three items would fit in a pocket.  He wondered if one of them might be the home of a small sea creature or if one of them might be rusty and realized he couldn't recall when he'd last had a tetanus shot.  He muttered to himself that he had the thought process of a hobbit or higher functioning gerbil.