Fantasy Fiction posted January 13, 2025 |
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When the waves wash over us...
A Dream of the Sea
by estory
I remember standing on a beach, in the sunlight, listening to the slow, soft workings of the waves of the sea on the sand. A great crowd was gathered there with me, enjoying the light and the water, the sense of standing on the edge of something, where the land ends and the ocean begins. Like any crowd on the beach, people were caught up in all sorts of pleasures; boys watching girls slowly walking by them, people swimming, children scouring the shore for shells and starfish, others lying lazily in the comfortable sun. There were strands of music in the air, laughter, excited shouts. The smells of salt water and food. These people had come from all walks of life to stand on this edge, this threshold, and with one foot still in the place they have always known for their whole lives, look out into what might come next.
The beach was on the shore of a great ocean. It might have been the Atlantic. The land seemed like an island; it might have been Long Island, the island home of so many millions of people on any given summer's day.
As I stood on the beach among all these people, I found myself thinking: 'Who are all these people? What do they do, for a living? Here they have come to get away from it all; to get away from what? To dream of somewhere else? Where?'
Suddenly I noticed that the sky, that had been so clear, was darkening into a strange, green color. The sand under the sky was also turning this strange, sickly shade of green. The people who had been walking about were now all standing still. They were all looking away from the land and out to the sea. I turned with them and looked out to the sea as well.
Then I saw that the water, which had been not far away, had been drawn far out from the shore. We were standing on this great stretch of sand that seemed to go out into the sea for miles. The people were looking at all the fish, shells and starfish exposed on the sand. We could now see all the things one could only imagine being under the water for all those years; shipwrecks and skeletons of the drowned, the lost, tattered flags of many nations.
Then I heard a loud shout and the people turned and began running back towards the shore, away from the sea. I heard screams. Some of the people ran past me, carrying their babies. I began to run with them.
I looked over my shoulder and saw a great wave of green water, rising higher and higher, into the clouds. It was coming after us faster than we could run. I tried to run faster, but I could see the wave gaining on us every time I looked back. The sound of screams grew louder. Some people fell and were left behind. Children were left behind by their parents, and I could hear them crying. The sky grew darker. The green light of the sky and the sea seemed to descend all around us.
Then I could hear the roar of the wave. I could see it picking up people and boats and sweeping them up from the shore into the sky above us.
I remember thinking; 'Is this the end? Is this what we have always known was going to happen in the end, in the back of our minds? This moment we have always been dreading, is it come upon us already? What then, was all this struggle, all these joys of life for? The hopes and dreams, the pain, the sense of triumph, the disappointments of our lives? And what will become of us after the wave passes over us and claims us?
Where will we be then?
This is a little piece that fits in with the dream theme of this collection, that I developed from a memory of a dream that I had once. I dreamt that I had been caught up with a great crowd at the beach on Long Island into a sunami. I still remember the green color of the sky in my dream, the green water, the people running from the wave, leaving children behind, screaming. The more I thought about it, it seemed to me to be a vision of the end of the world, and it made me think of what becomes of all our hopes and dreams, our joys and sorrows of life, when this moment washes over us and takes on to whatever comes next? And what does come next? estory
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