Run Aground

The sky had already been dark for some time before the muffled Sun sunk listlessly below the comfort of the horizon, giving up on this dismal day. A tangible blindness encroached in its absence, swathing the sea and the land in a blanket of uncertainty.

Although Earth held its breath in anxious anticipation, silence was not a guest that would visit this night.

The Ocean invaded the River in great bursts, overwhelming her with saline and romping waves. All the living beings who could had previously left, so so the cacophonous Wind was the only witness to the destruction below him as he shrieked and twisted hatefully through the shuddering trees and boarded-up houses.

River, swollen and bursting with overabundance, pressed up impatiently under the hulls of her boats, stretching their rodes until their anchors strained and their masts creaked. Still she pressed, and their anchors held them down. At last, her waves grew hungry for the straining vessels, and River, who had once been their friend, was friendly no longer. She roiled and raged as she suffered, leaving the pounding waves to devour the boats on her surface one by one.

As her water pressed higher than their anchor rodes would allow, the sailboats and the small pleasure yachts took in her violent pain and excess water until little by little, they shared fate with swollen, hopeless River. Upheaval was their destiny, and they were sacrificed to it with no ceremony.

Time was forgotten by Wind, Sea, and River. Only Sun dutifully tracked his journey around the globe to rise again in the East, duty-bound to see the next day through.

Exhaustion tearing him asunder, Wind let his furious clouds break apart under the warming rays of Sun. Ocean rumbled in her bed, but even as she began the slow, laborious process of withdrawing her magnitude back into herself, she lorded greedily over some exceptions of Earth which the lauded as spoils from the night.

River sprawled wearily over her banks, hugging Earth closely just to convince herself and him that they were still there. Earth shook himself free of the crush of Wind's storm, and River slowly withered back from her broken shore. Her boats were scattered all over her, sucked into the mire of her belly or shoved into her deadly stones and bridges. They, like her, had run aground...

...and it would be some time before she found herself again.

******

Kimberlee Long, February 15th, 2019

This is a short story I wrote, having witnessed the long term affects of Hurricanes Irma and Matthew. One of the slowest recoveries was to mark and move all the boats which we abandoned to sink during the storms. The empty vessels haunted the riverfront parks and bridges for months.