Water
By Matt Harrison

At first I thought it was a worm. Then the finger turned in the sand, and I noticed its nail. A second finger began to appear, revealing the first to be the forefinger of a hand. After the first two fingers came the ring finger, the pinky, and finally the thumb. At the center of the short fingers resided a palm. The hand crawled out of the sand to its wrist, and a forearm followed it. An elbow appeared, and then the arm’s shoulder appeared, too. Past the shoulder, the rest of a small body emerged. It was a baby. The falling sand sprinkled a red plastic shovel and an orange bucket, both sitting nearby. Finished with crawling out from underneath the sand, the baby sat upright. Behind it the still distant ocean roared. I smelled the salt water in the air around us, and for a moment the scent distracted me. The baby brushed the sand off its legs with half-aware swipes.

I first realized that the baby was aging when I spotted orange-brown hair curling out from the follicles on its head. He was growing rapidly. When the baby turned two, he grabbed for the shovel. Reaching over his legs to the sand he started to dig a hole. The hole evolved into a trench and the trench into a moat. When the baby grew to the age of three, he began to construct the foundation of a sand castle. I smiled when I realized it was Tim, my younger brother. Behind him the ocean’s waves crashed into white foam and the water disappeared into the sand. It dawned on me that the water was getting closer. Tim finished the castle. Clapping his hands together, he smiled at me. His cheeks turned into bubbles as his blue eyes glittered in the sunlight. I could not help but smile back.

A brown ant climbed up onto Tim. Grabbing it between his fingers he crushed it with a pinch. The waves crashed again, this time closer. Tim stumbled over to the water to refill his bucket. When he returned he poured the water into the moat. The water did not last long, and by the time he turned four it had disappeared. He returned to the ocean, and this time he only had to walk five feet to reach it. Filling up his bucket he faltered, and half of his body disappeared beneath the water. I screamed to Tim that he couldn’t swim, but my voice sounded faint as it disappeared into nothing. He stood up out of the water awkwardly. Returning from the water, he filled up the castle’s moat again.

When Tim reached the age of five, he stopped growing. His orange-brown curls had changed into straight brown hair. He had grown a couple of feet taller. The water kept advancing, and soon it had reached the moat. After overtaking the moat, the water arrived at the castle’s front wall. It marched past the wall and to the castle. Then the tide receded, but the water did not leave. A new wave rushed up and around the castle. Tim was now sitting waist-deep in water. He glanced up at me, winked, and smiled. I didn’t try to say anything this time. Tim had stopped growing but the water did not stop advancing, and soon, he was gone again.