Rocky Waters Story Idea– 07.09.2021
The large hissing of the waters awakened him to light-beams stretches behind endless trees. The beacon above the light caught his awaking attention to his objective, his goal. A hinged land-mass of branches, a larger than life idealization of his past, a guiding path where the solemn waters meet a solace of hope. He stretched his legs alongside the rocks and sand behind the trees. He would take every branch and forge a boat, large enough to handle the waters for miles and further. Everything made sense in the past, but his life had turned regretful after the loss of his parents and livelihood. He of course blamed himself for not turning back.
The flood had reached half-way up the brick foundation of the first floor and evacuation teams crammed boats of varying textures into the town hall. Another crash and himself, dazed and confused, barely awake, used the ladder alongside his window, now easily accessible the yells and screams of passerbys directed at his windows. He scurried between the landmasses of his house and the approaching boat. Landing inside, he took one last look at the physical embodiment of his childhood memories.
He carried his mind to an immediate yell. “My family was at the bakery. Please, for the love of god turn this boat around!”. There was a hesitant before everyone collectively began paddling the boat in the opposite direction. With instructions on where to turn, provided with road signs still visible from the top of the water, everyone crowded around the bright green Crecent’s Bakery sign. Anxiety in his heart, he frantically dived towards the entrance. Only two feet in, he realized the door was closed. Fear kicked in. He felt the top of the walls. The two small windows had been broken in and he reached inside. He felt a hand., pulled the body he realized it was none other than his father. There was silence.
One week had passed when he peered into the bakery window to find his mother and his father’s unrecoverable bodies. Everyone was evacuated up the long mountain-side pathway that surrounded the village. Everyone was transferred to small shelter and the character had a long time to think. He realized something. With what little money he borrowed from a kind stranger, he rented a horse carriage up to the corn fields out west. He once found this place on a vacation with his now lost family. The two farmers greeted him as if to say “Yes we’ve seen you many times before you are most certainly welcome here.” He told them that he would not be staying long. He told them about his family. They offered him their condolences.
With night-time surrounding his windows he peered from them once again. It was barely visible, but in the distance menaced a large brown figure. It was a tree fully visible from the large fields. Everything made sense in the past, when he was a child. Before he introduced into a line of poverty, his family was comfortably middle class and could afford to transfer him to a private school at the age of 8. He had little time accustomed to school, having skipped a year and only beginning to become accustomed to his public schooling.
She sat two rows from him and he began sketching her in his journals from time to time. Even now he can’t remember how many pictures he ended up making. They often were the same sort of thing, a plant or a building, anything that was observable. She was the first he ended up drawing, and who knew this would later improve his capabilities of getting into college. Even at a young age he presented a lazy demeanor. In contrast this girl he liked was diligent and always presented enthusiasm to anything she worked at: sports, study hall outside of class, socializing… to him it seemed there was nothing she couldn’t do. His few interactions with her were usually a “hi” or “what page were we on again?” until one day he mustered up the courage to ask her out… to a viewing spot. She had a flustered face and assumed the former until he had to re-explain what he meant. They spent the rest of the day travelling from railway station to station together until the long descending hill came into view through their window. He had to jerk the arm of the driver because he wasn’t accustomed to stopping and the next one would be miles away. Again there was an awkward silence between them until he finally stumbled: “T-this was cool, I think, because you can see the boats driving along the shoreline below the slope.”. She nodded.
Not much happened between them within the next several hours. What was first awkward exchanges seminated into long idle discussion of their hometown, drawing, their anxiety of crowds, and their plans of the future. The sun occupied their discussions, and once it gave out, they realized it was time to head home. Before she began up the hill, he grabbed her arm and began taking off his shirt. “We should go a for swim while we’re. Who knows when we’ll get this chance again.” It was true, she remembered, they lived a long ways from the coast, but she wasn’t ready to face the embarrassment and wet clothes after a nice swim. She decided it would be fun.
They swam in their underwear to the opposite port-side and had to awkwardly climb up the tall boat-dock ridge, almost as if in unison, turning their bodies to face the hillside they previously stood at. “It’s really interesting, the feeling of swimming. We live a whole hour away from pools or anything of the sort. I was only taught when on vacations, and it seemed so liberating.”
“Do you think this is supposed to mean something?” she replied. Him, not sure how to react, looked towards her for the first time. She looked off into the distance. “It seems so quiet here. I only thought that if I surrounded myself with people, out performed others, strived to be unlike my peers, that I would obtain something; that I would get somewhere in my life.” He saw a side of her that he didn’t know existed. “And what if, what if there isn’t anything after this? Would all of this just be in vain?” There was a long silence. “I don’t think it really matters.” She also turned towards him now. “I never saw myself getting anywhere in life, so I supposed I wanted the best of every moment. Even now, I still have no aspirations. The wealth my family values doesn’t even mean much to me. I mean, it takes much more than money to feel grounded in life. I’ve read books where some of the wealthiest live corrupted and tortured by reality. It almost seems like the more freedom you have, the less it equates to. So to answer your question, I don’t it really matters, as long as your happy.”
It suddenly made sense what this kid was dreaming. I always noticed his distance as if had different aspirations as those around him. For him it was never about succeeding academically. So many try and fail when the curtain of adulthood drops and they begin their realization that only present matters in the end. He seems to understand this, and chases after the moment rather than the future, regardless of the consequences. How crazy it was to suggest swimming on a school night like this!
She woke up, one leg touching the sand the other numb from a wooden sensation. A quick turn to discover it’s a light-house. An awful wind broke her from the inside out, like a freckle of water sliding down a loosely threaded string. The current was getting stronger and she needed somewhere to rest from her headache. The taste of melatonin seared the inside of her mouth as she walked juxtaposed against the shore-lining. The soft sand cured the throbbing pain in her right leg palm. It’s as if ------------------ taken by multiple shorts breaths and fell into a hard and shallow cave. It continued to pain her thinking of the memory and she felt her head sliver from side to side like a dizzy perfume. She looked up.
“Drowned to death –“ were the first words that triggered his tears that salted his table and by extension his meal. Nonetheless his appetite was gone. The shuffled stack of letters along-side him, which he later read, reported casuality after casuality. Apparently this flood was larger-scale than he thought. With what little money he had left, (family might let him stay, too empathetic to kick him out despite needing money)
The quiet night occupied the air as they waited for their clothes to dry. What if I were to overpower her? They waited for the sun to rise and parted ways, making sure not to arrive back at school at the same time. The rest of the year occupied his mind as a restless wait for another interaction with her. Unfortunately, they were in different classes. Occasionally he would cry.
“I’m starting college early because I had an overloaded class schedule. I know we haven’t met since a while, but let’s go back to that pier.”
As the train rattled back and forth, he quickly glanced at her. He noticed that she was pale. “I don’t know how to make this part interesting.” he said. Their eyes met. “But if you feel you need to sleep, then I’ll wake you up when we’re there.” That’s where it made it awkward. She seemed more irritated at him then grateful. It was a long train ride, so he decided to look out the window. The clouds had started gathering in small clumps. They formed what seemed to be something tall and sturdy, but he couldn’t quite make out the shape from a distance.
In his disillusion, he noticed things started looking unfamiliar, remembering his vacations… he realized he missed the stop. “There’s a delay due to inconvenience.” the conductor informed the passengers, although him and her were the few remaining. Fourth-five minutes passed before the train continued, and by then it started to rain. “Do you want to call it quits?” He asked. She shook her head, and the doors began opening. They rushed along-side a roofed building. His bag contained a small painting barely large enough to shelter two people from rained. He explained the plan, and they began briskly walking, making sure not to get any rain on them.
Twilight started to set by the time they reached the shore. Then found shelter under a standing beach umbrella. “That reminds me,” he said “did you notice the strange shape the clouds were forming.” She took care to choose her words carefully. “When I just a small kid,” she continued “we had a large tree near our river. We later had moved to here, but I remember a peculiar thing. One day I explored farther than usual and saw a strangely colored tree. I investigated only to find it was submerged in water! I told my family later and they said it was impossible. As a matter of find when driving through the same place I couldn’t catch sight of what I had previously seen. Am I crazy?” He shook his head.
“Anyways, that cloud shape reminded me of it. The tree. I had been expecting you to ask me out here. I noticed you became a painter one day after school when I noticed you under that sign. I figured it might be interesting if I provided you with something amazing. Is this starting to make sense?”
He responded “I literally don’t think that’s possible. How did you come up with this idea?”
“We have a pond in our yard, and I began experimenting.”
“But that’s different. Who knows if that will work on something large scale like this. Something that’s too deep that would require tall growth.”
“But it’s worth trying” she responded.
He couldn’t come up with an answer. “Sure I guess. But I’m moving away soon after high school, so I won’t be able to see your great invention.”
“That’s fine, she responded. If you even come back. I’ll show it you.”
She stepped one foot off into the sand, one leg pointing back to a long wooden pike submerged in the water. And stopped breathing – as if through a vice – uncontrollable gasping she left her body but still intact left a writer’s trace on the story. As if born into a boy’s body she leapt between timezones. Unapparent to her were the rules of existence (one cannot shallowly add themselves into a story which has no purpose). Instead the rules, written backwards, left zero meaning except confusing un-utterable sentences.
Outside of planting a tree within the water, whom neither person would do quite anything, they glanced their separate ways from there-on out. Harmoniously they pursued the same goals, to live a life of peace and happiness. As he moved away, his family started a new bakery, and his artisianship aided the presentation of their otherwise quite plain pastries. It was only a week before high tides made the morning newspapers.
Before day broke he sat idled in his bed over listening to the mundane attributes of his tenants lives. In comparison, he felt an urgency unlike those around him. His life, being over, would start again if he could what was long gone in his memories. He took his horse out for a drink, before setting back out over the non tampered road, where he could still see in the distance what others couldn’t: an approaching large object which he may be able to call home.
He beckoned himself, propelling by thoughts, desires, HE MUST CONTINUE this plan.
It was before the rocky waters carried his body to shore that he realized everything that had occurred before this. Him, spending night after night, exhausted, assembling his boat piece by piece. His goal, the tree, which he had known grown out of the water, unlike him or his childhood friend had expected. And finally, the person he was trying to reach this entire time.
Despite this, there an ache in his shoulder, which he could hardly do a thing with, except have it painfully crash against the waves as it became number and number – until he could realize his situation – he was stranded alongside the waters, no longer without a boat, and his tenni-shoes were beginning to crumble in the sand.
Respitefully he stood up after hours and hours of pain, barely numb in the head, and moved backwards – feet or miles (it didn’t really matter) until he reached the char coaled tree he marked - with all of his belongings all there. He grabbed a left over barely edible apple, took a seat, and passed into the warm shaded night. His belongings would still be there by morning, thankfully.
Except when he rose he felt a strong aching in his stomach – something had gone on too long – nonetheless he withered at the sight of the destroyed pieces which he had spent days working on, only to become a barely salvageable mess of raft parts. He’d spend the rest of the food, which he had saved since he left town, and would accordingly resort to maintaining less important parts of the raft scaffolding (maybe one floor piece) to construct a spear for hunting; given he had to worry about this circumstance in the first place. So after a few more days of reconciling with each raft part, and nearly depleting his food, he now confidently felt like ---- Having tied the rest of the rope to the mast, he kicked off the boat and tackled the restless, rocky waters once again. The departure only lasted a day, as the currents were firendly to him, and new land was surprisingly nearby. As such he needed to carefully dissasemble his raft, and repeat the same motions to traecking to next available coastline.
Apart from tiredness, the whole motony had left him after this process repeated for the third time. It was fascinating how land and water could intertwine so closely together, especially at a time when he needed this the least.
The food had now run out.
An open love letter to anyone who’s made it this far in the writing:
Over a year in, with a premise, still not fully fulfilled, this may be the last ounces of inspiration left for this project. The spoiler is (he made it to the tree which he and she had grown underwater – which they had not expected. The tree is gargantuan and he finds she is living inside of it. From there they are able to live comfortably with each other.) Instead, interpret the story yourself. Go ahead
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Have fun,
bagbee