I Once Dreamed of Underwater

A Boy's Voice: But mum! I don't want to go to sleep!

A Woman's Voice: Oh dearie, I know! But how can you play tomorrow if you don't sleep today?

The Boy's Voice: Well...

The Woman's Voice: And tomorrow, there'll even be a parade! The king will come and all sorts of carnival food will be everywhere! If you oversleep, then you'll miss it.

The sky was soft--overcast in the color of downy white feathers. And yet, despite the muffled sky, the beach glittered still. Sharp blue and reflective black peeked out each square inch of the littered sand; they were shells--shells washed up from a place far, far away, and far, far out of reach.

A girl bent down, picked up a jutting blue. She lifted the shell to her ear and listened.

They say, after all, if you just listened hard enough, you could hear a trace from a place far away. If you listened past the sounds of the waves, past the sounds of the water, and past into the depths of the shell you could hear--a snippet of a memory underwater.