This story is part of Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, a climate-fiction contest from Grist. Read the 2021 collection now. Or sign up for email updates to get new stories in your inbox.
* * *
The coral could no longer tell her apart. Her breathing had slowed and so had her body. She knew she was running out of footsteps. A decade of walking would do that to a girl like her. The sand could sometimes catch her heels, distracting her to memory. Getting lost in who she once was and forgetting what she was becoming. That’s how the stillness found her. Surrendering to the glimmers of a life above the water. Her life before the water. Quiet. Alone. Broken whenever the current breezed through her, its chill seizing her neck and voiding her pores of plankton, algae and grit. Cold enough to remember what real wind feels like. Standing at the peak of some hill — what was its name again? Farnham? Or was it Felicity? No, that’s just what she called the feeling. The name didn’t matter. What mattered was the breeze.... Read more
