Ocean Waves

• Archana Subramaniam, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2018

As the light fell, it lit up the currents and swirls of his morning coffee that seemed to glisten and froth, spinning around and around, like the tides of a moonlit ocean or a milky galaxy churning away for millennia and millennia. He watched the swirls, hypnotised as if watching an obscure, mystic dance, observing the steam that rose from the cup and disappeared into the light like a waterfall dissipating into rocks. Slowly, more people trudged into the cafe and the quiet stillness of the air dissolved into a cacophony of noise — cutlery clanging, paper rustling, boisterous laughing and quiet whispers — all woven to form a perplexing tapestry of sounds. It was almost like the sound of ocean wind that echoed through seaside caves; growing loud, then quite and then loud yet again. The cafe was strange, albeit popular for its exotic feel, with its dizzying, glittery lights, ineligible music and walls studded with a bizarre paintings. He was, however, was drawn to only one painting. A winged man and a young woman, both with smooth, shimmering skin, almost silvery in the cafe light, who seemed to hold each other in a loving embrace as they flew against a lilac sky. The painting seemed strange and out of place in the cafe, just like the palest of lilies floating in murky pond.
There were several others in the cafe now and the cafe felt smaller, as if the air around them had shrunk and the walls had come in, making the space warmer and humid, like a rainy day in midsummer. He added an extra spoon of sugar to his coffee and looked up to see a pair of businessmen discussing something with a woman, smiling. He mixed the sugar in, his spoon cutting through the froth, which was now thinning with time. There was some muffled sound — a exclamation of surprise and a sob. The woman was trying to snatch a phone from the man’s hands and the phone fell on the ground before the man seized it back, and a photo flashed for a second— the woman’s pale body. He heard urgent whispers — pleads and demands. The man pushed her against the wall. Kissed her, forcefully. “If you tell, we’ll show”. Then they were gone and then everything was fine again. The cutlery still clanged and the paper still rustled, people laughed and they whispered, like ocean winds that came and went, and the bizarre paintings still stood, watching this all. All was fine, except for a woman who sat alone on a table of three, in front of a coffee that was going cold, who simply watched the cafe for a few minutes, eyes filled with tears, until she met his eyes, the only ones which had seen. He started standing up, as if to comfort or say something, but then sat back down, swirling his coffee with a tea spoon, watching its waves and undulations as if it were the wide ocean itself.