The World, Made Sea

                The last words they spoke to each other, weeks in the past, ring in their ears every morning and every night as death fast approaches, as no reprieve seems nigh:

“I’m scared.”

“Well, there’s nothing we can do now.”

“I know, but still… I’m not ready to d-”

“And you think I am? What option do we have? There is no escape, my dear.”

Each day the sea creeps closer. The blue mass alternating between solid and liquid as it claims more of the shore. Once they could see fish in it, swimming scared through the frozen, yet navigable, waters, but now even these are gone. The Hungry Goddess claims all.

And soon she will claim them.

They do not comment on their fear anymore, nor their hunger, both feelings so obvious, so omnipresent, that they bear little remarking. They do not speak at all, in fact. Exchange nothing but sad glances, silent touches. Bit by bit the island, once large, grows smaller and the world becomes ever more the sea.

A shipwreck abandoned them on this isle, a year or two hence. First the solitude was manageable. They had each other, the only two survivors were blessed to be friends. In the night, seeking solace, they gradually grew to be more. They huddled together for warmth, and then… for more than warmth. There had been plenty of food, trees that bore mangos and coconuts, rivers brimming with fish, trees for lumber, which they worked into fire and into shelter. Even the occasional animal, a squirrel or mouse or rabbit, to provide a new kind of protein. They could persuade themselves they were happy, that they didn’t need to be rescued. Not yet.

But then… things changed. Something odd in the waters. Or about them. They swallowed up the beach, negligibly at first but soon larger swaths of the island began to disappear. The hungering ocean devoured the sands, then the trees; obviated the rivers, their currents joining its own. Soon the small creatures of the island grew silent, drawn into its ever expanding mass. The sea… somehow they sensed it was alive. Its susurrus laugh kept them awake in the dark, the ever-rising tide crept closer and closer.

After a while, what was an island becomes a meager patch adrift in a limitless ocean, and the two survivors wonder if the whole world had become naught but sea. If they are the only two survivors of a creature whose appetite was limitless. They can see in the slow swelling liquid the bones of its past meals. They hug each other, growling stomachs touching, in their fear not daring to speak or move for fear that they too would touch the living mass and disappear and succumb.

Soon they are forced to stand, day and night surrounded by ravenous waves.

Soon… they will be nothing. Nothing but bones in a world made sea.