And the mountains fall into the heart of the sea

“And then, as never on land, he knows the truth that his world is a water world, a planet dominated by its covering mantle of ocean, in which continents are but transient intrusions of land above the surface of the all-encircling sea.” ~ Rachel Carson

Two slick gray bodies came to the fading edge where my waves crashed against the beach, a now blinding white expanse of jagged crystals piled into salt dunes that replaced the once smooth sand of the island coast. The first body had a white spot on the back of its head. It was round, like an eye. As I tumbled the lifeless form in a relentless cycle of waves, the eye peered out to shore, seeing, unseeing… seeing, unseeing… seeing, unseeing. The second creature was identical to the first, but smooth and spotless and very much alive. It darted around the corpse, its nose occasionally poking above the surface. It nudged helplessly against the inert flesh in its struggle to return its companion to the open sea. But no creature could fight against the fate I had already decided, and eventually, I spit out the dead one from its lifelong refuge and onto the salt desert.

Its black eyes were closed but its white eye was open, watching. It gazed onto the shore and saw men foraging in the climbing heat of the early morning. There were five of them, all wearing a full protective suit to protect from the sun and the pockets of heat trapped between the salt towers. The forecasters predicted a record heat that very afternoon. It would be 141 degrees Fahrenheit. They would have to return to their shelters deep within the mountains hours before the peak of the sun’s sweltering fury.

There was a century of drought before the earth was depleted of its freshwater. During those years, the rivers slowed to a trickle and dried-up lake beds destroyed nearby towns in storms of ashen dust. Since then, each week brought a rising heat. Still, despite the signs of escalating temperatures and impending destruction, humans couldn’t change their ways. They couldn’t imagine a world without water. They continued to water their green shaved lawns, fill their tepid pools, and feed their money-making livestock until not a drop of potable water remained. Soon the seas contained the only water left on the planet. And that’s when worldwide desalination began. Humans began taking my water and returning only the briny remains. And so, the seas grew saltier and the land more inhospitable.

When the men glimpsed the white eye and the gray body at my edge, they knew they would return home with their spoils long before the worst of the heat. The salt crunched beneath their boots as they charted a path to their means of survival. The humans secured the beached seal into a tarp to carry between them, and its living companion observed from my shallow waters as four of the men grabbed each corner and lifted the weight onto their shoulders. As they started to move away, the silent animal raised its head into the air. On its face was the anguished contortion of grief, the unmistakable mask of loss. It was motionless in its mourning as it watched its friend being carried away. The fifth human, trudging behind the group, stopped then to look back toward the horizon. He was smaller than the rest, a child on the verge of adolescence, and he saw the face of the creature bobbing somberly just beyond the crashing waves. Above the turbulence of my tides, he heard the falling tears not only of that creature, but of all the creatures hidden in my depths. His face mirrored the mask of loss.

           The men returned to their shelter beneath the mountains and lived for a while off the sustenance of my coffers. Then they returned, for only I could sustain the life that the land no longer could. For another century, this continued. The boy grew into a man who scrounged at my edges with other men, and the desalination plants continued to churn out life and bring in waste. The salt towers grew into mountains of their own. The sun beat down and choked the atmosphere. The creatures under my care dwindled. But I did not despair. I waited patiently for the day of silence to fall over the earth.

           The day of silence came as expected. A quick breeze swept over the land and animated grains of salt. Nothing but the cold stone faces of the mountains remained. The only life left on earth lay dormant in the unsearchable mysteries of the ocean. I reveled in that moment, in the brief desolation that had settled over the continents. I debated only for a moment how I would proceed because a small part of me wanted the land to remain in this serene silence. But then I remembered the mask of sorrow of my creatures and of the boy that grew into a man, and that moment faded.

           From my deepest, darkest valley, a rumble began that continued to build into a thunderous, crashing roar that split the foundations of the earth to its core and unleashed the forces that confined me to my mantle. My waves rose a thousand feet as I spilled out onto the land, from the shallowest shelves to the tallest peaks, consuming every dry place. I swallowed the deserts, mountain ranges, plains, and islands to contour a new world re-birthed by water.

Silence came again, but this time to a blue world. My waters were still but not fruitless as life began teeming beneath the surface. New life would be restored from my waters, life in abundance. After millennia, humankind would have a chance to start afresh, and I would begin to recede around the land below me. And through it all, I would be watching, hoping that all life remembers the all-encircling sea. The beautiful has not vanished, even as the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.