Quondam Sounds
Abhiram Kuchibhotla
The beach was clean. A marvel. The water was clear, the shells and crabs peeping through the translucence, battling with the underwater sandstorm that was uprooting their homes. The trees rustled with secrets I could not understand without a Rosetta stone to aid me. Islands were so cool. It had been a while since I had visited the Ocean. Usually, it had been to play in the water or to to marvel at the size of it, but this visit was burdened with the knowledge that this Ocean would swallow everything I knew in about a decade’s time. “Hello, Ocean,” I said to it, wondering if it would talk back. “good afternoon” it said to me, and I was not surprised at all. “do you not cower at the size of me would you not greet a power greater than you respectfully” asked the Ocean, in a voice whose undertones I could not quite decipher. “O great giver of life, O great maker of life, O great thing that occupies seventy percent of all land on Earth, how do you do?” I asked it, fumbling for words, but smiling as I said it. “seventy percent of the Earth what does that mean” asked the Ocean. “Well, it means that out of the Earth’s entire size you occupy seventy percent, so if this Earth is –” “what is size” it interrupted, and I thought about it for a couple of seconds. “You know, this - this Earth is a finite thing, it is not infinite, there are a lot of things out there other than the Earth, and you are –” “but I am the other thing” it interrupted again. “No, like space,” I said to it. “what is space” the Ocean asked. “Uh, the Earth is a planet in space,” I started to say when the 40
Yours Truly
