The Sea Chose for Us

I saw him clearly for the first time, the day the sea reclaimed our house. I remember how the salt-water crept through shattered doorways, slow and thick as old blood, until it lapped at our ankles. Our belongings floated around like lost thoughts: upholstered sofas, custard-yellow mugs, photographs of people we no longer knew.

That afternoon Margarit stood mute beside me, her hand gripping mine like iron, her stubborn jaw cutting forward in defiance as my husband delivered his ultimatum. He looked between us once more and spoke those weightless, poisonous words,

“It’s either her or me…”

After that sentence fell from his lips, a dreadful clarity settled like frost on the surfaces between us—the cold knowledge that all fixed points of reference had shifted. None of us could pretend anymore. I saw how his narrowed gaze skimmed past my shoulder to the rising sea, water gleaming dully under smudged skies. He knew he had already lost. But it was important to make me choose: to place the weight of this betrayal solidly upon my shoulders.

Before answering, before anything could be sealed or severed, the ocean breached our walls with a roar that was almost laughter. Margarit tugged me toward the doorway, pulling me out of that flooded room without another backward glance. The house splintered behind us, boards and plaster dissolving beneath the hungry surge. Neither he nor I would have to utter the bitter trivium of choice.

It's funny now how much stock we place in decisions, as if every moment hinges on the throat-tight agony of “her or me,” “now or never,” “left or right.” Margarit once whispered, as the wind whipped our hair to living tangles on the abandoned coastline after we'd run free, that choice was a human superstition. The earth doesn't know “or,” she said gently. Only “and,” only “again.” I never asked her to explain further, though I often wondered how deeply her mind pierced through the membrane of ordinary thought.

When the waters first rose ten years ago, authorities cloaked panic in hollow reassurances: “Managed flooding,” they called it. A wry euphemism, we said bitterly, mocking their optimism as higher tides swallowed neighborhood after neighborhood. Margarit's family had lived atop Thistle Hill, overlooking the dying city, where father stacked sandbags along the crumbling seawall and mother arranged clay pots filled with rosemary and lavender—as if the sweet, herbal fragrance might banish catastrophe.

I met Margarit when we volunteered at the rescue shelter, beds lined with evacuees reeking of uncertainty, stale sweat and metallic fear. We handed out water bottles, rationed pills, coveted blankets. Side-by-side in neon blue vests, we became sisters of restlessness, our friendship binding us tighter with shared shock and careers suspended permanently in their tracks.

My husband never grasped Margarit's gravity, the still force of her relentless compassion threaded with unyielding will. Snide asides slipped from his mouth like slippery fish—“Your vagabond nun again?” or more pointedly, “That woman is dangerous. She's poisoning your thinking.” Did he know, even then, that Margarit saw through him with such naked perception? His fear manifested under layers of dismissal, resignation masking dread of her quiet scrutiny.

And now it came to this, our final house half-submerged, tides rising inexorably, Margarit holding my hand tight as pearls clasped between clamshells. My husband dangled his impossible request in the dripping air. Outside, the waves beat their fists against windows, low bellows of anger or sorrow, perhaps both. As I hesitated, urged to choose between past tradition and future uncertainty, Margarit's fingertips trembled on my palm, whispering all the complicated words unsayable in that moment.

The ocean, apparently impatient, chose for us. Or perhaps the planet had been choosing steadily all along, and we were merely too arrogant to notice.

Afterward, we traveled inland, joining straggling groups forming makeshift caravans through drowned landscapes. Along highways blocked by sunken vehicles, past scorched towns with skeleton buildings gaping at smoky skies, we followed those who spoke of new higher ground. Margarit became our quiet prophet, guiding us subtly yet persistently forward. She led us toward self-sufficiency, planting seeds salvaged from abandoned gardens, showing us how to discern edible mushrooms nestling hidden among decay.

At nights around small fires, huddled close against cold gusts, Margarit taught children how constellations mapped ancient stories. Orion, Cassiopeia, Cygnus—narratives whispered through generations, perpetuated long after human ambitions crumbled to dust. I helped gather paper scraps, scribbled down fragmented remnants of communal memory. Together we reinvented the act of survival as storytelling, scripture woven anew.

Some blamed politicians, some corporations; Margarit blamed neither, but instead pointed tender blame upon us all, speaking calmly without pointing angry fingers.

“She heals,” others whispered awe-struck behind her back. “She sees clearly where we blinded ourselves with greed and denial.”

Perhaps my husband survived; perhaps he moved inland earlier than most, stalwartly pragmatic, findable somewhere behind barbed fences guarding dwindling freshwater reservoirs, risking little and compromising plenty. I allowed myself brief imaginings—reaching him by faded letter, hearing his voice crack across distance. But eventually these uncomfortable longings frayed and unraveled; our separateness became final as shoreline beneath rising tides.

One chilled evening atop a granite ridge, we made camp under starlight splintering gently through clouds. Seeing exhaustion soften my friend's patient face, I finally asked Margarit what she'd meant years ago: the earth not knowing “or,” only “and.”

She smiled, her gaze encompassing hills and sky, battered forests and scorched fields, before resting softly back on me.

“I believe the world doesn't distinguish between husband and friend, between man and woman, between you and me—not at heart. Only humans do that, erecting barriers of choice when we become confused or afraid. But look around you—we breathe common breath shared by countless forms of life, drink water recycled endlessly through air, body, earth. Nothing is exclusively chosen. No one thing is favored. Everything thrives interconnected. The earth knows no ultimatum.”

I imagined then Margarit's world—the world beneath ours—blooming with infinite possibility. Was this what terrified my husband so deeply, her refusal to choose starkly, her insistence on complexity beyond binaries?

If so, perhaps he was right to leave us.

Decades now blur behind. Margarit sleeps finally beneath clustered white yarrow, her ephemeral wisdom dispersed among children grown wise in their turn, teaching others. Her small stone mound sits overlooking slopes swallowed again by sea—a sea whispering “and, again,” in endless undulations.

I've grown older, gray-haired survivor, guardian of stories and humbled recorder of lost dreams. As communities regroup, adapt, flourish anew atop islands emerging through ruin, I see Margarit's gentle revolt against the tyranny of singular choice reverberating softly through life around me.

Even now I shun simple binaries that dare one person against another, nature against humanity, the past against the possible. Margarit's voice echoes inside mine when I'm tempted to embrace easy certainties or to give into clean divisions.

My husband once instructed harshly, “It's either her or me…” How strange now to recall that ultimatum and know its falseness utterly. Like grains of sand along coasts eroding, swallowed, reforming endlessly, life refuses such crude separations.

We belong not to simplistic choice; we belong instead to complexity. To “her and me,” to past sorrows and future joys simultaneously—a breathing commonality eternally defying singular declarations or petty ultimatums.

When eventually I rest deep among tangled roots beneath flowering sage, I will know no forced choice awaits my weary heart. Instead, beneath the patient earth, a whispering ocean will softly utter back to me—as Margarit's warm hand once clasped my own—the simplest truth: never “her or me,” only and again.