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jurisprudent
08-07-2010, 02:38 PM
The boy was sitting on the big rock, swinging his long legs above the white foam of the crashing waves. Next to him was his grandfather, the old seaman, smoking a cigarette under the last remaining light of the day.

“Grandpa”, the boy turned to him, “tell me what lies beneath the waves.”

The old man threw the cigarette. “Now you see the surface, boy, but the undertows flow beneath.”

”What are the undertows?” the boy retorted.

“When you look to the surface, you see the calmness or the roar, the foam or the lucidity of waters. Deep down, the streams move in their own ways, in their own direction. If I jump from here, from this high rock, I will go under, under the waves, and then the undertows will take my body. My body will twist and turn, and you may find me far, far from here, I will travel strange roads under the surface of the water, carried by the undertows.”

The boy shook his head. “Then, grandpa, I should not be bothered by the waves that crash here below us, but by the undertows that flow there deep beneath and I cannot see them?”

“The undertows, boy, alter the ways. Alter the ways.”

The boy and the old seaman were sitting on the rock, above the white foam of the crashing waves, under the last remaining light of the day.

hillwalker
08-07-2010, 04:06 PM
Very poetical and lyrical.
Sounds like an interesting prologue to a longer piece - but not sure on the setting (the dialogue sounds a bit archaic so it must be set in the dim and distant past?)

H

jurisprudent
08-07-2010, 04:16 PM
Well, I made it up as a kind of prologue to all the stories I have posted - if we hypothetically put them in a book, this will be the introduction which sets out a key feature of all the characters and stories. I think it should not be taken as archaic but a bit biblical.