The sea washed me ashore. I wasn’t certain if it was night or the sun was blocked by dark clouds. Since there were no stars in the sky, I assumed it was day, I may have been wrong. I might as well have been dead and floating into dark nothingness. The truth is that I had always hated the shore.  It has never been anything more than a dark and hostile place for me. I had witnessed the horrors that lay on the land, the hot golden red demons which when met the sea boiled our fellow tribesmen.  More out of submission, than fear, I had sworn that I’d never go near the shore.  Why was I here then?

Let me start from the beginning.  After fishing for some mollusks, and eating my stomach full, I had been resting, when a high tide pulled us out of our shelter and tossed us towards the shallow end of the sea. Land was nearby, and an unknown fear began tightening its coils around me. I looked around for my fellow tribesmen. They were all tossing and turning in the frothing sea.  I struggled to stay afloat. It doesn’t happen every day that you wake up and find yourself fighting for your life. I reached out for a fellow tribesman, who I recognized from a recent hunting trip. He shrugged my advance and slipped away towards the depths. I don’t know for some reason my tribe wasn’t fond of me. It was perhaps because while they rubbed their bodies against rocks, and bit each other for fun, I watched the monsters from the land dive into the sea. I had always been fascinated by the golden beings who when dove into the sea turned black and claimed some of the water for themselves.

The current around me was strong, and with every passing moment, I was being swept towards the land. My fellow tribesmen wailed and struggled to swim away. I however being sleep deprived could barely muster up the strength to take a deep breath and dive deep beneath the dark foam covered water. I was struggling to stay afloat when the waves got the best of me.  The water rose, like a monster I had encountered last week while looking for food, and dragged me deep within. It wasn’t entirely bad because this is what I had wanted to do all along. What came next was a surprise. If only the monsters in my life would let me be. The monstrous wave not only pulled me into the water, it dragged me along the sandy sea bed. I looked back and saw two of my fellow tribesmen grin at me.  They too had been caught by the wave and were being slid across with me.

By the time I reached the shore, I had passed many a broken shells, some really good places where we could hunt for mollusks, and a giant dead monster. Its teeth were still sharp, I know that because one of my two companions had been pushed directly into its open mouth and was split into two. His upper half was still grinning, I wasn’t sure if he had realized that he was already dead or was about to die.

After being washed ashore, and surrounded by darkness. I struggled to get back into the sea. A strong wind swept across the land and parted the dark cover over my head. A golden beam of light ran down the sky lighting up the shore. My eyes which had become accustomed to see in the dark were blinded by its brilliance. I glanced around for my other tribesman, but perhaps he had slipped back into the sea. I was all alone on the enormous shore. I felt cold, frightened, abandoned even. I closed my eyes and rushed towards the sea. Land was bad, that’s what I had been told all my life. I stumbled upon a rock, reoriented myself and ran as fast I could. The rocks ended abruptly and my feet hit a muddy patch. The sea couldn’t have been far. With my eyes still closed I pushed harder, but instead of hitting the water, my feet got heavier. I tried to shake off whatever had gotten hold of me. I opened my eyes, hoping to find myself in the mouth of some giant monster, but it was dry sand which was clinging to the slime on my feet. I shook some of it off and looked up to see the blue mass of water at a distance. Fear which had gripped me since I was woken up snapped away, like a chord which had been tightened more than it should have been.

Curiosity had taken hold of me. I looked back at the sea, and saw my footprints on the sand. The tide would wash them off soon, or maybe they’d be found by someone someday.  I looked ahead at the barren planet, and I felt more at home here, than I was back in the sea. In turn the planet welcomed me with thundering clouds, and it began to rain. I walked away from the sea thinking for a name for my new home. Maybe I’d call it earth.