"This is the Sea."
The Father had taken the child to the shore, and held him high above the waves with outstretched arms. The child blinked at the white light reflected upon the water, tiny pecks of fire darting from the crests of waves, and his untried eyes attempted to grasp the pattern of the ever-changing surf.
Troubled by the shifting sheet, he twisted slightly in his father's grasp, and the latter carefully moved to put him down.
Swaying on yet uncertain legs, the toddler blinked again under the ashen light, and looked into the Ocean. Hesitantly, he walked into the water, the gentle waves lapping at his feet; the foam like pallid fingers clenching and unclenching around his slender legs. His feet sank into the sand, and soothingly, tenderly, avidly, the waves danced about his frail ankles. To the ears of the child, they sang out with the strangest voice, endless and cyclic; they sang out, to him, filling the silence with boundless meaning and yet seemingly devoid of sense. His pitch-black pupils did not reflect the seascape, and yet his eyes devoured it, taking in every particle of light and every shade of grey. The water swelled about his ankles and his calves, caressing, seductive, possessive; always searching, he felt, for a way in, for a way to pierce his skin and infiltrate his flesh, for a way to break into his body and flood his veins and make him hers.
Sullenly, he bent down to pick pebbles up from the strand: small, rounded pebbles that fit well into his tiny fist; and flung them towards the infinite stretch with a childish, total will to hurt. The sea swallowed the stones, burying them in her breast, and the waves laughed, softly; and they said, "We want you; you will be ours," though the child did not understand.
A stronger swell leapt up at his chest, ramming him onto the sand, and saline water gushed into his nostrils and his mouth as he gasped for breath. The thought of yelling out failed to cross his mind as he laid with his face under the water in awe, all sound blocked out of his ears by the surrounding water but the silence that he could hear; for a second being granted the sight of a uniform sky through the changing screen.
Two strong hands reached to pull him from the triumphant waves.
