Long ago,
Before we knew how to write,
Our stories swirled in the winds.
Every blue moon,
And sometimes sooner,
The winds would collide.
Stories long forgotten,
Slid to the earth,
And slipped into the dreams of the sleepers below.
And for a moment,
They remembered once more.
The oldest of the wind-held stories was that of the creation of sand.
Before then,
Soil,
Rock,
And water were all the planet knew.
Osea,
The spirit of all the seas and oceans,
Hated herself.
She knew not what sand was,
But she knew soil,
And what the soil created when she was touched.
The abundant and fertile mud helped the plants grow for all of the creatures,
But Osea lived her existence in filth.
For almost all of the water on earth,
She never was clean.
The moon,
Watching over Osea,
Saw herself loathing and spoke with her in quiet,
Rounded tones.
Osea,
I have sent you a man.
He shall,
Within a few days,
Find his way to you.
Osea was even unhappier.
I have no use for a man.
They churn up the soil that creates my filth.
Take him back.
The moon was quiet for a moment,
But Osea was still in the mood.
She was not afraid to take him back.
The moon was quiet for some time,
And then said softly,
Osea,
You need love.
Osea was enraged,
And with her deepest waters she summoned waves and threw them at the moon.
She could never get high enough,
And finally stopped when she was exhausted and spent.
Rain fell on her as tears.
For two days,
Osea waited for the man to appear,
And for two days she imagined what she would do.
On the third day,
A tall strident man walked to the edge of her waters and began to yell in a thousand voices.
Each voice called her ugly,
Dirty,
And beyond salvation.
His spittle fell to the foam of her waves,
And he never seemed to tire.
Osea never thought of drowning this man,
This odious creature hurling words from a thousand different tongues.
She began,
Instead,
To sing.
First in her throat,
Only in notes that she could hear,
And then through every wave and crest.
Her song was rich and clear,
And it spread across all of the oceans and seas on earth.
Every creature alive could hear her sing the song of herself,
And mankind called it the day we stood still for the ocean.
The man sent by the moon also stood still.
Osea's song had shot through him and was holding him in place.
His black eyes glittered cruelly,
But Osea sang with no regard for the man.
When she finally sang the right note,
Not a truly high note,
But simply the right one,
The man exploded over the landscape.
For hours he fell in shards of stone until the last piece of him came to earth.
The shards struck a rock,
Their sharp tips colliding,
And a resounding click shattered all the shards into an almost fine dust.
The dusty sand covered much of the earth until the story winds blew it toward the oceans and seas.
Osea,
Who chose music and pride over drowning,
Now had clear sand that sank when it met her and no longer lived in pools of mud.
Though it pained her a bit to do it,
She spoke with the moon.
Thank you,
She said.
I did need love,
After all.
Amon el.
