Ocean Children

• Madison Roberts, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2016

In this story, we pack our bags and move to the roaring calm of the seaside. Buy a house made of salt water and sand. The seashell wallpaper in the bathroom is chipped and cracking. Floorboards creak with every mournful moan the ocean makes - longing for her lost children. The bluebell paint on the front porch reminds me of the walls in my childhood bedroom. The kitchen tap splutters and spits sea urchins into our teapot whenever we tried to make tea. We call it home.

Wash our hearts in the salt water that leaked through cracks in the windowsills. Leave them out to dry on the makeshift clothesline you made yourself from three cups of optimism and six yards of twine. In the evenings, we journey along the shore to buy pearls from the fish market. Beady-eyed sellers stare at our tangled hands with raw craving. They sell us sweetheart beads and pearls made lovingly from the ocean’s gentle hands for her children. There’s an entire shelf in the living room dedicated to her skill at smoothing even the sharpest of rocks.

You’re the best at skipping pebbles into the ocean. They go soaring twenty miles into the distance; the shine of their surface winking at us days after you threw it. Mine never make it to the second skip. They’re always being swallowed greedily by the ravenous jaws of the sea. She is reclaiming herself.

You proposed to me in the middle of a sun-shower on the hottest day of summer. The swelling of the ocean’s voice on the rocks around us serenaded our slow dance - it lasted 6 days. Happy tears trickled into the seawater at my feet. They embraced gently - as if reuniting with an old friend. Our wedding was held on the first day of autumn; mermaids with seaweed hair held my silkworm spun train as I wafted through the sand to you. We vowed to never leave each other’s side, so long as the ocean kept breathing its erratic heartbeat against the side of our home. When I leant in to kiss you, the sea caressed our ankles in blessing.

It’d been 50 years since that day and the taste of the ocean still lingers on my chapped lips. Our grandchildren are made of sea foam. Crowns of coral and shells nestle themselves in their unruly curls. Pearly smiles as blinding as the ocean’s most treasured jewels. Your weathered face always crinkles with joy from your place in front of the fireplace when they come home laughing. They gift you with the smoothest pebble they found on their adventure and beg for you to skip it.

When we died, we dissolved through the floorboards on the front porch – you, into warm sand and the smoothest pebble, and me, into chipped seashells and salted tears. The ocean embraced our homecoming with open warms, planting watery kisses on our grainy cheeks. Her children had finally returned to her.

We were home.