The Log in the Sea

Their little feet ran faster than the wind on the sand, past trees, over roots, under branches, ripping through leaves like monsters, which Alik was, at the moment. “Graaaa!!!” He bellowed, racing with his face out first, uncaring about thorns hidden in the grasses below.

“Alik!” Kali yelled, running past and then ahead of him, squealing and laughing as he lunged to catch her with his monster’s claws. What claws they were! Glistening with the blood of his most recent kill, black and dripping with terrifyingly immoral deeds. The ground trembled underneath Alik’s feet as he bounded out, past the line of the jungle and into the open sand.

It was a beach. Alik the monster came to a stop. Kali stood, out where the waves were breaking, by a gigantic dead black log. The surf sprayed around it. Knee deep in the ocean, she turned and waved Alik over. Alik walked up to the log with reverence. Imagining. What size, what power, what thrilling currents would waves need to pull a trunk this size from the jungle to the waterline. The enormity shook him. What could such an ocean do to them? It was pointless, he knew, but to test his strength he yanked on the trunk. It didn’t budge. He pulled. Pushed. Jumped on. Yelled at. Finally, Kali stated the obvious: its stuck.

She scrambled onto it, and stood. The ocean spread out around her, from her. The vast waters. The waves broke and pulled and broke and pulled, as if breathing. Blue, gray-blue, undulating far, far out. The rest of the world. She couldn’t see the horizon. The line that normally marked where sky ended and ocean began was smudged today.  The ocean and the cloudy sky were one. It could be, she thought, that there was no sky, and this was all water. Blue below, blue above, and Kali looking into it from a sandy edge on the side. One more step forward and she would be underwater, without even being underwater. Kali looked at Alik and told him, “Get on!” He got on, straddling the log, lifting his legs so the water wouldn’t touch them. Well, The spray from the surf didn’t count, he decided.

Kali looked out and recalled a dream she had had. She had been underwater. All around her there was blue, like early morning, or late evening. And in the vast blue there was nothing. It was empty. She had struggled initially, but way upwards towards the surface that bodies instinctively knew didn’t exist in the dream. There was no “up”. There was empty blue all around. She found she could breath underwater, despite not having gills. As easily as breathing air. She swam a little, hoping to find something, and made out a shape in the distance. She swam towards it and the shape became a bunk-bed, and she knew the top bunk was Alik’s, because he was sitting there, and the bottom bunk was her’s.

“Hey-ho, off we go! Off we go to sea!” Alik hollered, and he set his legs down and paddled. Kali joined forces with him, and together for each mighty push they hollered a mighty “Huh!” Slowly their crew of two felt the giant trunk under them lift. They Huh-ed! and kicked, leaning their bodies forward. The sand unwillingly let the log slide. In it went, gaining speed as it left behind the shallows. Huh! Huh! Huh! Alik and Kali kicked in perfect tandem. Waves lifted their log up and down, and up and down. Further and further they floated.

In the enormity of the ocean, the trunk looked like a stick, with two knobby upright branches. “We go, we go, to the edge of the world we go,” sang Kali and Alik, although they both knew that the world had no edge (it was more fun to think that it did), and that this wasn’t the original song (it made sense to change the lyrics to fit their situation). They sang, enjoying the speed the current added to their paddling. The wind dried their backs. The log floated on the sea. The sea was the sea was the sea: a giant who had not even noticed the two adventurers. The sea mourned and lived and tried but didn’t always succeed in keeping her emotions from getting away. What was it she mourned for, so consistently, for so long? “We go, we go,”  Kali and Alik chanted.

A while later Kali and Alik stopped singing and kicking. They had reached the center. the midpoint. Kali knew this, because she couldn’t see the shoreline anymore, and the horizon line was still invisible. They floated in the center of the blue circle. Only the ocean’s breeze, and the soft sounds the water made in keeping the log up interrupted the perfect peaceful quiet. Alik closed his eyes and listened to the wind’s well-traveled stories. Kali lay her cheek on the log, letting her arms and feet dangle off the sides, and watched the light play on the waves.

Kali was mesmerized. Her thoughts began to imitate the rise and fall, the light and dark, of the ocean. Her body felt the need to disperse, like a chunk of butter on a slice of bread that needs to be spread. She tried to grasp the space, the area, the sheer size of the ocean, without losing the oneness of her self. She could feel how one by one her atoms were doubting their reasons for being her, and not becoming part of the ocean. It was too much to take. She shut her eyes. She let the bobbing motion of the log begin to lull her to sleep.

Alik was an excellent audience, when the story was good. He smiled, scowled, frowned, and wept at all the correct places, without ever making a interruptive sound. The wind’s stories had no real ends, but when part One was done he sighed and gave as good as a stretch he could, sitting on a log floating in the middle of the ocean. Faintly, on the wind, he heard his own name. And Kali’s. Kali, nearly asleep, heard it as well, and sat up. It was their mother’s voice. “Alik! Kali! Lunch!” the wind whispered.

“Coming!” Alik hollered. And they both jumped off the dead log. 

Little fictions

for H and Fatema ben

The sky is blue. Then it turns a hazed orange. And in the twilight zone the females come out, in high heels and black dresses, hunting their prey behind sunglasses. Their hair flies like dandelion seeds in the wispy breeze, and their fingers point and ask questions better left unsolved.

You see, the night shows a few stars, in between the clouds. Beside me, my brother and my sister don’t see them. They see fairies dancing like dragonflies mating, they see the pulse of a thousand grasshopper heartbeats, they see the milky light of a moon that isn’t out yet. They see sunrise. But it is still night.

This is what the morning brings. Birds chirping: Bird 1: So lets go eat. Bird 2: That front yard looks promising. Bird 1: Yeah, the weedy ones are always awesome. I love humans that let their weeds grow out. Bird 2: Yeah, hahah, imagine how annoyed their neighbors are. Bird 1: hahaha.

I wake up too late for the sunrise. Remnants of a sleepover pierce me like rida pins dropped and stepped on, lost somewhere in the depths of this carpet. Here, lost things live in a secret community. If there is silence, you can hear voices. A sharp thin pin voice asks: Where’s the washroom? A round milky bead voice replies: Roll down the steps, then spin left. Pin: Isn’t there one closer? Bead: No, that’s the closest one. I’m pretty sure. Pin: Well, fine. You sure are pretty too. Let’s talk later. Bead shrugs but a faint pink flush colours her as Pin leaves. But perhaps it is only the reflection of the sunset outside the window.

The stars, after a short summer night-shift, come to my store just before sunrise. Its true. They leave their places in the sky and fall into thin plastic beds, smoothly, thinly. At their arrival, a wind rustles in the store but the alarm stays off. No one sees them come. Except the security guy, who lives with the guilt of falling asleep at his job every day, because he thinks it is a dream. Even he doesn’t see them shrinking, dimming, and sticking themselves onto sheets, whispering goodnight to the other celestial bodies: to Saturn and her rings, to bright and brilliant Venus, to cold Pluto who doesn’t reply. In the morning sun’s audacious light, their faint glow is invisible.