Stormtide
by saprolangtoken
Status: Public


The sea used to stay where it was put. Used to. Now it flows wherever it wants. They had to abandon the docks. They were driven from the town of Stormtide like so many fish scattering from a shark. They fled to the hills. Now, for some even that isn’t enough. The foothills have been claimed by the sea. Soon even the bone-hollow mountains will be just another archipelago on an endless sea. It got to the point where the mountains were little more than pips of land in the deep sea.

One boy set out in the last boat. He couldn’t take it anymore. He headed out. Out of sight. Out of food. Out of fresh water. Then it rose up to greet him. It was like a fish. Like a fish in the same way a mountain is like a pebble. It surfaced slowly. When the world is your domain, you don’t need to rush anything. Its eye came level with his small boat. Even the things eye dwarfed any sense of scale. The boy saw this. The boy knew that this was the greatest fish in the sea. The fish knew it too. It swam slowly forward. He watched the great elegance of its fins in their mighty strokes. He saw the fins heave from the water and cover the sky above. He saw them swoop through the air. He saw the fins pour seas down on him. Finally, the fins touched down again. They slid again into the sea. He knew this was no fish. It was a god. The boy knew then what he must do. He dropped to his shaking knees and placed his hands on them. He lowered his head and began to pray.

The prayer came out, not of his mouth, but from the whole submerged landscape. It was the chorus of ancient stones pleading with the sea: “unhand me.” The sea responded. “NO.” the boy gave up the prayer. It was then he realized that something as small as civilization mattered not to the sea itself. Nor to its god.