I make a sound of disgust, putting the book aside. Even in my annoyance, I’m careful as I place the fragile thing on the blanket I lie on. It’s one of the old sorts, made of genuine paper and ridiculously expensive. I stole it from home which is filled with the things.
“What?”
“Just another absurd thing in this book I’m reading,” I say in a bored voice, not even turning around to look at the person I’m talking to.
The sky is the clear blue of my eyes, with not a single cloud to blemish its perfectness. The sun is bright and a little ways behind us, ending its morning rise from the east as it heads for the middle of the sky. The ocean sighs ceaselessly a few feet before us, licking at the soft land it meets.
'I must do it soon,' I think, playing with the notion of destroying my little perfect world in such ease that I almost convince myself it would be as simple as that; as easy as a thought.
I let go of that problem as I think of the sea heaving before us. Filla, my tutor, must have told me the story of its creation a hundred times, but I never tire of it. The idea that the place between here, Betastu, and the far islands to the east as well as many miles beyond was once dry land is hard for me to even picture. 'What must it have been like to live in such a place,' I wonder.
I don't know if the sea had risen over centuries or overnight then. There are no records of that world changing time, or, rather, none I could find. Though, I kind of like the idea of waves as high as mountains raging down the land, coming out of nowhere in a blink of an eye.
Or, better yet, finding water slowly flowing down the plains when I wake up one morning. Just an inch or two of it, seemingly harmless at first, like something large spilling. A thing that I would think will dry out in a day or two. But it wouldn't. It would keep on coming, day by day, growing with deceptive ease. Taking its time as it floods everything around me until one day I realize it will never stop.
Within a few weeks, everything would be dying or already dead, making me finally face the facts and move on to higher ground. And move on, and move on, and move on... I, or my descendants, would only stop moving on at the hills of Betastu. The water would slowly rise up those hills, but it would never pass them. Over time, and I like to think a person could witness this in a single lifetime, what once was a pile of earth would slowly crumble to form the sand I lie on now.
"So..."
"Hmm?" I say, coming down from the heights my wondering had taken me to.
"What was it you read in your book?"
"Oh," I say, finally turning to look at the person beside me, "it now tells of the main character walking eight miles on her freaking feet to find her lover."
He laughs. And looking at him, I can't help but smile myself. It's always been like this. Since that first moment I met him, I've been reacting to him. I tell myself it's his looks that distract me, but that's not the complete truth. Yes, it was his beauty that first caught my eye. But what kept my attention for the last few months is his character. There was something in his very being that drew people to him.
"You'd think they would come up with a more believable number," he says, smiling easily. "What's the count now?"
"Five, I think," I say, trying to remember. "There was that ocean creature larger than a ship," I begin, counting on my fingers, "and that time she swam one of those old swimming pools in a single lap."
"What about that time she went to the stars," he says, turning on his side to face me.
"Oh, yeah," I say, remembering the moment I read it. It had seemed ridiculous to me then, but, even so, the idea was simply too wonderful for me to forget. 'What must they've been like to imagine such things,' the thought settles in my mind comfortably, no stranger to my head.
"And that land animal with the tusks."
"I told you that's real," I say, meeting his dark green eyes for a moment. "There's a skeleton of the things in the old museum in Addis."
"Ok," he says, sounding less convinced than he should be, "what about the chocolate?"
"Yes!" I remember clearly reading about it. It was unforgettable not only for its description of a thing we already had in real life but also the exaggerations and the untrue things it adds to that description.
"’It melts as soon as it touches my tongue,’" he starts, leaning close as he speaks the words in that soft, slow way of his. "’I feel the sweet and sour taste as its silky texture fills my mouth with its richness.’"
"I think you forgot 'its smell that invades the room and makes my mouth water'," I say, before we both burst out laughing.
It is at this moment, when my worries seem far away, that the alarm pierces the air around us.
The sound comes from the arm of the boy beside me. A yellow light shines brightly just below the skin around his wrist before the noise cuts off as abruptly as it had began. The light dims, but doesn’t go out.
It’s his BioSen, warning him to go inside. My own stays silent. I had always known it was like this for those 'less fortunate', as mother would say, than I, but the first time it happened was when I truly thought about it. It was only then that I really thought of the fact that most people had to go indoors to survive after a few hours outside if they weren't workers whose employers had provided protection for. Just because they couldn't afford the tech that I and those like me take for granted, they spend a large portion of their lives in the security of buildings, only able to survive brief moments outside each day.
I turn to look at the water, unable to help it when the remnants of our shared mirth slip from my face. He sits up beside me as we stare at the ever moving sea, both of us trying to look as if nothing had changed. Though I try to think of anything but her, my sister’s words come to me in the silence.
“You’ve to stop it,” she had said when I had finally given up trying to act as if I didn’t know what she was talking about, “or I will.”
I still don’t know how she found out. She had simply burst into my room one evening and told me she knew what I was doing. I was so terrified at first, but then I was angry. Only later did I see I could do nothing but what she said. In time, I was even grateful it was she and not anyone else who found me.
“I must go,” he says, not looking away from the sun kissed water before us. The yellow shining from his wrist was slowly changing to a light orange.
I don’t say anything. It’s been like this ever since I decided to go along with my sister’s plan. I have become distant from him, unable to even share the simple misfortunes of life with the ease we only allow to those we love.
“We can’t mix with them,” was the way my sister put it, her face contorting with snobbish disgust that would have made even my father proud.
If anybody other than my sister finds out, it will be him who will suffer. If he’s lucky, he’ll be sent to the southern continent. There to spend the rest of his life away from all he knows in one of the colonies dotting the long canyon which once mountains of ice had kept hidden for millennia. If he’s unlucky, he’ll become Shoreless, doomed to roam the seas until he dies, or finds an island far from the rest of civilization.
‘I’ll be saving him,’ I tell myself, trying to believe the words even as I think them, ‘I’ll be saving us both.’
“We’ll meet tomorrow,” he says, and the way he speaks makes me turn to look at him. It wasn’t a question but a will shaped into words. And behind these words was held another question he feared to ask.
‘Of course he knows something is wrong,’ I think.
“Yes,” I say, hoping the smile I feel on my face looks real.
He smiles back, and something inside me hurts. He gets up and walks slowly away from the beach.
I turn my gaze to the empty sky where once, in the distant past, birds had swam the winds. I pick up the book from the blanket. The air is heavy, the water loud.
‘I’ll do it tomorrow,’ I tell myself, and for a moment, just a sliver of time, the lie seems true to me.
