Preface to all three posts: As pleased as I am with the warm reception of my first novel, I have, over the course of the past year, been engaging in a massive re-write. As I continue to slave away on this, I have worked hard to do something which, for me, is very challenging. Specifically, to throw away content (particularly when I'm fond of it). Still, it's for the good of the novel as a whole, so I am disposing of three "vignettes" sprinkled throughout the first version. For the sake of posterity, and mostly because I want some eyeballs to read these before they are tossed into the dustbin, I present one of them here:
A warm breeze weaved its way through the palm fronds of the southernmost island. The beach, festooned with massive boulders and ribbons of sand, was pulsing with life, as terns, coconut crabs, and white-tailed birds moved about and sought their morning meal. Where the land met the sea, the mangroves hovered just above the surface. The roots of the trees drooped into the water, and small fish darted around their tendrils.
Farther out in the water, beyond the beach, and past the long, shallow slope of sand, the coral began. Staghorn, elkhorn, and sea fans rose from the seabed, and the abundance of colorful life navigated the forest with grace. The grinding noise of dozens of parrotfish, each of them engaged in the ceaseless act of chewing algae off the hardened calcium, was the only sound in this otherwise silent world.
Red and black sea urchins were anchored to nearby rocks, and sea turtles, most over a meter long, pushed their flippers behind them, gliding toward deeper waters. A school of angelfish fluttered past, the iridescent blue streaks across their vivid yellow bodies creating another swirl of colors in the chaotic and kaleidoscopic scene, and the entire archipelago was bathed in sunlight, completing a spectacle of peaceful vitality.
Eons later, in the era of homo sapiens, this place would be described as a paradise. Images of these creatures and their surroundings would imply a heaven on Earth, whose sights and sensations would evoke cravings for adventure in any person, as well as a willingness to shell out large sums of money just to have a little time there.
To the creatures there in that ancient time, no such thoughts of paradise would have any meaning. The moray eels, hiding like sock puppets in whatever crevices they could find, the vivid neon nudibranchs undulating near the ocean floor, and the occasional octopus shooting by had neither the capacity nor any reason for such a thought. This marvelous reef was all they knew and all they would ever know.
Yet only thirty feet farther out to sea, the flamboyant hues and abundant shapes of life gave way to the drab. A small, round stone lay on the seafloor, coated with brown moss. A few feet away was a second stone, similarly shaped, and likewise adorned with dullness. Then another. And yet another. And so it went, for the entirety of the millions of square miles of ocean covering the planet. A ceaseless progression of the unremarkable, the unseen, and the plain.
For those fortunate few inhabitants swirling around the rainbow rocks in the warm, shallow waters of the Seychelles, the alien depths of the ordinary ocean might as well have been another world altogether. One did not know the other. Yet every creature on the paradisical reef intuitively understood it was exactly where it belonged.
