Moa and the Sea

Her ancestors were the first to sail the globe, long before Columbus. They landed in western South America before Leif Ericson landed in eastern North America. Their ship builders invented new techniques and even new tools, to pioneer sea exploration. Their Sailors learned to navigate the globe using only a star map, stored in their mind. Moa’s father taught her, just like his father taught him.

Covid-19 was only the beginning. Rising global temperatures incubated deadly mutations that eventually wiped out the human population. When the ice caps melted, the oceans lost their oxygenation. As these levels dropped the majority of life couldn’t live in the ocean. The great algae bloom turned the oceans into green cesspools. As the land was lost, Moa’s family set sail. Moa never sailed on blue waters, only the green sea. Other than her Mother and Father, Moa had never seen another human.

Her first memory was her mother holding her in loving arms. Moa held up an unsteady head, peering out across the water. Her father, a thin man only wearing a wrap around his waist made from broad tropical leaves, shifted the sail around to catch a cross wind. The sail was tattered and worn; a dingy brown color that had been baked in the sun.

The waters were warm and contained a lot of energy. Tropical storms and hurricanes constantly made round trips around the planet. The Great Storm was earths own version of Jupiter’s red spot. It lived since before Moa was born and was capable of more violence than she ever would be. When Moa and her family weren’t searching for food or making clean water, and her Dad wasn’t braiding rope and her Mom wasn’t weaving sails and clothes, they were fleeing from The Great Storm.

Her father taught her to fish these waters. The fish are small, they feed on algae and bacteria. Only fish that can live on low amounts of oxygen have a place here. They are tough and dirty, but humans are resilient and resourceful.

Floating on top of what used to be Asia, is a bamboo jungle. As the ocean level raised so did the bamboo. These plants raced the sea level to the sky. The bamboo grew into a dense forest, rooted on the ocean bed that was once Asia. Giant lily pads gathered and grew around this thick floating jungle. Bobbing up and down with the ocean waves. The pads are the closest thing to dry land Moa ever knew. Walking across them was like walking on a pool cover. It helped to be small and light weight. Giant insects the size of Moa’s head inhabited these newly formed jungle swamps. Giant bull frogs the size of a pit bull are the apex predators. They have big all-seeing eyes and are lighting fast, but since they don’t have any natural predators, they are not as fearful of Moa as they should be.

Her Dad showed her how to stalk and move quietly around the lily pads. How to spear the bullfrogs and use their tongues to make insect traps. The bugs themselves were gross, but the wings didn’t taste too bad. A few times they even built a little fire on the pads. The fire cracked and burned hot with the airy bamboo logs, before long it burned through the pad and the green ocean extinguished it.

Once they were sailing over what use to be Egypt. They hit the tip of the great pyramid of Giza. Only about a foot or so stuck out of the water. It damaged the catamaran’s outrigger. As her Dad repaired it, she looked down at the crown of the pyramid, wondering if it went all the way to the seabed. The Great Storm creeping closer and closer. A lifetime spent feeling and riding the swell of the ocean was grounded when she touched it. She felt a calmness, a steadiness within her she had never felt before. As if her whole life was spent as that of a drunk and just for an instance the room stopped spinning. When she let go of it, it was gone. They sailed off, just as the thick fog from the storm hung on them like wet clothes.

Swimming in the ocean was a death sentence. The amoebas grew to the size of baseballs. They infected and fed on flesh, but the brain was their preferred meal. Parasites, the size of bait fish, sat suspended in the green murky ocean, waiting to inject their host with a batch of eggs.

The sun was diving into the green wet marble on the horizon. Time ticked into the twilight hours. The frog giggers preferred time. Moa wore a tunic and pants her mother wove from fibrous plants. On her feet, she wore swamp shoes. Bigger than her feet, to spread her weight out on the lilies. Built to shed water, keep her feet dry.

Her Dad preferred to be bare foot, easier to feel prey in the water. He wore no shirt, and his shorts were small, his skin tan. He wasn’t much bigger than her. He had already killed one bull frog. It swam under the lily, an evasive trick, but the man had seen it before. He speared the frog through the lily and cut it open with his knife, claiming his prize. They built a fire and cooked the frog legs at mid-day.

After lunch Moa seen some ripples in the mud in front of her. She danced around easy on the lily pad. As soon as the frog popped up, Moa speared it. Her dad came over to help her. He was trying to pull its legs out of the muck when he cut his finger open. He reached into the mud and pulled out the object that cut him. A piece of aluminum from a cola can, from before the waters rose.

The fever set in that night and the fear wasn’t far behind. Moa managed to get her dad back to her mother and went back into the jungle. There was a plant her Dad had showed her when she was little, it had antiseptic properties. She spent half a night searching and finally found it. She cut 3 bulbs off and headed back. She was too late. Her Dad passed away after the wound went septic.

It was hardest on her mom. She didn’t talk much after that. She loved him and they were old, and he was gone. She accepted it was her time too. She woke Moa in the middle of the night, with a night terror. Moa sat with her till she fell asleep. In the morning she woke before Moa. Her face was stern. She looked ahead of them, out into the sea watching The Great Storm draw upon the heat energy the ocean provided. She watched the sun as it struggled to break the water’s surface tension on the horizon. She touched her daughter’s hair and smiled. She walked off the port side of the ship, plunging herself into the water. She didn’t struggle. She breathed in her last breath of seawater and she was at peace. When Moa woke that morning, she was gone.

Moa sat on the deck of the ship. Alone for the first time in her life. Adrift in a sea that never ends. All she could do was what she did as a child and always did as an adult, sail. Moa didn’t have it in her to just give up, but if she lost fighting for her life so be it. She pulled the sail around catching new winds and set on a new course. The Great Storm.

She had a purpose, that’s what masked her grief. Something to focus on. She would best the storm or it would beat her ship down and strew its planks along the surface. Then, it would best her and fill her with water and let her drift down into the sea. She leaned against the mast of the ship, her cheek touching it, the sail stiff and taunt grabbing as much wind as possible, the catamaran clipping along to the heart of the storm. She didn’t care which one it was. She was alone in the world without purpose. This gave it to her.

As the ship sailed, she worked it over top to bottom. Where the timbers on the deck met the runners, she latched them down with extra rope, her dad made from a fibrous stalky plant. She replaced the sail with the new one her mother had finished weaving and reinforced the loopholes where the rope ran through.

The ship punctured the thick blanket of humid air inside the storm. It hit her hard in the chest, taking her breath away. It took her a minute to adjust to the weight of the air. She started dropping excess weight off the ship, jugs of fresh water, the equipment for the water desalination process, pots and pans, extra bamboo for the ship, her Mother and Fathers’ things. Anything that wasn’t structurally sound. The waves started to white cap and slammed into the side of the ship. Unwavering, she held the rudder on course, to the heart of the storm.

Lighting bolts were hitting the water just ahead of her. It was critical to take each wave straight on, even a little angle to her approach would cap size her ship. Big rain droplets were pelting her in the face and the mist of the sea covered her, she didn’t care. Just then, BAM! A huge lighting bolt struck just star board of the ship. The light and sound reached her at about the same time. Ionized particles misted her in the face, and she fell into the bow of the ship. Nature’s wet flash bang just detonated in her face.

Ears ringing, vision blurred, Moa seized the rudder and got as straight to the next wave as she could. It nearly capsized her boat, but the fruit of her work was survival. She looked ahead of her and seen it. A giant green tidal wall approaching. It was so tall she couldn’t see the top of it. She angled the ship the best she could. The swell came up to the tip of her boat and began to pull her up the ascent. She was like a climber at the base of a mountain, being pulled up against their will.

The ship was nearly vertical. Just for a second, laying on the inside of the hull, she experienced weightlessness, a calm and steady feeling came over her, like that day she touched the pyramid. The water quickly washed it all away. She then felt as if she was going to fall out of the boat. She reached into the hull and grabbed the timbers. The wave turned the boat over and came down onto her with a wet iron fist.

When she woke, her mouth was dry, and her lips cracked. She lay on only a few surviving bamboo planks laying halfway in the water. Her arm and thigh hurt. She crawled towards the top part of the planks, pulling herself out of the water. An amoeba had already started to melt the tissue away on her forearm. She scrapped it off on one of the planks. On her thigh was a large puncture hole. A parasite had injected her with eggs. She knew the breed from the wound. They would stay in her thigh for a while and leave the host unharmed.

The skies were clear and blue all around her. She didn’t understand why the sea hadn’t claimed her. She accepted the slow painful death from exposure lying out on the planks. She turned her head towards the horizon. She was in and out a few times, and then she saw it under the sun. A sailboat, it was white, and it was headed straight towards her.