Wide Blue Expanse

There were stories passed down from our ancestors, stories of a wide blue expanse, buffeted by wind, teaming with life, where natural predators were rare. We swam as far and as fast as the waves and currents would take us. We rested when the hunt drained our energy, rested when the storms raged across the water, rested when the current slowed our frenzied progress. Then we hunted, our dominance spreading over miles, our presence felt in the tremors of the water rushing behind us. Nothing that swam in the deep was safe from our gaze, fish fueled us, and we devastated shoals from coastline to inlet. Our ancestors hunted together, the water bore our numbers and swallowed our refuse. Then as the stories go, solitude became our path, each to their own waters, their own territory, their own beaches with sandy shores and slow currents. Those were the stories, the ones that we felt in our bones, behind our eyes, deep in our souls.

They were just stories now, and our wide blue expanse narrowed day by day.

The wide blue expanse, still buffeted by the wind, life brimming below and above the surface, and now we were no longer the predator. Now there was something else. We noticed first in the numbers of fish, where there had been plenty, now we struggled to fill our bellies. Next came the destruction, thick black sludge, slippery plastic, the waste of the world slopping into our water. Then we truly knew fear, as the hunter became the hunted, our territory infringed by a threat our ancestors never prepared us for. Slow lazy swims near the shoreline used to fill me with peace, lazy circles in the water contributing to the rhythm of the waves. Now there is no peace, traps set by devious hands give little warning. If our ancestors could see us now, instincts on overdrive to protect against the ever growing threat. We go further; faster, the waves and currents still embracing our legend. Our hunting grounds pushed further and further from the waters that bore us. Our wide blue expanse narrows, day by day.

Into this narrow expanse I went, where the currents and hunger had harried me out past my usual space. As I settled into fish, I felt the water tremble with short harsh beats, the thin smell of sludge in the wind. The first line dragged through the water and instincts jerked me back from its touch. In succession, catching the sunlight in unexplained whimsy, lines flew by, sharp hooks trailing meaty flesh into the water. Hunger baited me forward, sweet ripe blood that trailed into my nostrils with overwhelming abandon. The water wrapped around me, forcing me back as a thunderous rush of bubbling madness thrashed into the calm. A sister, covered in blood and foam, fighting the pull of the sun soaked line. Her body prevented my execution, forcing me away from the lines and back as she was dragged upwards. I felt her anger reaching out, touching me for a moment, reminding me, we are not the hunter, but the prey. I carried the scent of her death back to my shoreline, back to the calm blue depths of my isolation.

I wondered if our ancestors would band together, there is strength in numbers, ferocity in packs, and immunity in inclusion. Apart we fall, together, we would have claimed every shoreline. Even as I wonder, I bristle at the thought of leaving my seclusion. My shoreline is dotted with tall swaying trees, my beach a pebbly path that breaks out into the waves. My sky trembles with the violence of thunder, and weeps with the storms that chafe the waves. It is the best part of the sea, the uninhibited ferociousness only a mother could claim. I embrace the storms as I embrace the calmness that follows, part of my being, an extension of my soul, my wide blue expanse.