far

Fiction

The Unknown Beach

Daniel Hudon
issue three

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For a long time, unknown to anyone, waves have been crashing onto the beach. They respond to the differential pull of the sun and moon, rear up with the tide and tumble onto the shore. Because of the complexities of the lay of the sand and how the water regathers itself, no two waves are the same, yet no one is around to distinguish one from the next. And how could these waves be characterized anyway? On a scale of loudness? Combinations and distributions of foam? Accumulations of beauty?

The great ocean itself ruffles out and the edges flap along the shore like a shook blanket. Gastropods and mollusks have no choice but to succumb and they are cast onto the beach like refuse. If a shell collector came by, he or she would find a treasure trove of collectibles: olive shells, shark eyes, even tiger’s paws. Some are new, still used by their owners. Others are recently vacated and worth hanging onto. Many have been smashed beyond recognition into scatterings of debris so that the arrival of another wave gives the sussurance a note of quick-click-licking that is impossible to miss. But the beach is so remote that it has never seen a footprint and no one knows if it ever will.

If it’s a moonless night, phosphorescent algae ignite the waves that now roll in speckled with microbial stars. When the moon climbs into the sky, far out into the water you can see these sparks of life flickering under the brilliant shadow of moonlight. Back on the beach, crabs poke their beady black eyes out of their holes, sidestep over the sand, and skitter and scavenge first one direction, then another.

The sand used to be rocks and boulders but the waves have thrown one against another and worn them down for so long that now only small granules are left. Already there are more grains of sand on the beach than stars in the Milky Way. With time, the number of grains will grow and the number of stars will fall as they begin to burn out and new stars run out of material from which to form. That’s the way things go. For now, the stars rise above the beach like they always have.

With all the recent exploration and discovery on the Earth and in the solar system, it’s hard to believe that the beach is unknown. Even stranger is that no one knows if anyone will ever find it.