spout

Once there were these beasts all over the land, but they disappeared when the buildings became permanent. And as the horizon grew harder to see, and the silence disappeared, the beasts felt unwelcome and spread farther and farther into the land. Occasionally, they would rise from their slumber and look at the freshly made world, but they hardly liked what they saw. Their cousins, the giant whales of the seas, wondered occasionally about the disappearance, but the fish were always calling and there were many seas to explore. And slowly the memory of the land whales vanished from the land, except for a few story tellers who embellished these memories into fanciful tales. And so it came as a surprise to everyone, when one day, a spout was seen in the lake. We knew that the land whales slept under the ground, but how could one have survived under the water? People gathered to watch the spout, because the whale never surfaced, and at night, we could see phosphorescent algae light up the base of the spout. And then the rains came and the lake filled with water. The spout weakened, and the algal lights grew dim. The whale spoke to me then, one lonely night as I was making my way back to the house. The entire land was bathed in the soft yellow of the street lights, and nothing moved, not even the wind. The voice of the whale reached me like a whisper in a dream- it was deciding whether to leave or stay, but I could tell that it had already decided, the surface was too alien to it. And now that the slumber was broken, it would start seeking others of its kind. I tried to convince the whale to stay, but all it agreed to do was leave its spout behind.