In a rented boat with
Aiks
down a tropical inlet
they row
long and winding out
to sea
When reaching the
ocean
the water is rough
Pahn says
“there aren’t many
islands here”
but they see a
few and
Aiks says
“there are some”
A few hundred yards
out Pahn realizes
that the boat is
sinking
They swim back to
shore and
Pahn tries to pull
the boat with them
Pahn notices that the
water
is not deep and the islands
are remnants of an
old coastline
and it is apparent
that the coastline
is receding
rapidly and
he wonders if
ocean will consume town in a few years
When they reach the
inlet it is dry and
the water level has dropped ten feet
Pahn and Aiks
speculate
that a tsunami is
coming
They walk up the dry
inlet
(at some point losing
the boat)
with Aiks
trailing
The inlet gets
smaller
and smaller
Eventually
they reach a tunnel
which becomes
narrower
and narrower
and Pahn
yells back
to Aiks
that she may not fit
and that she should
climb
out of the channel if she can
The tunnel
is barely large
enough for Pahn to
crawl
on his hands and
knees
While crawling
he puts his hand down
on something
alive that bites
his hand with very small teeth
He’s not sure how big
it is and
thinks at first it is a rat then assumes
it is a mouse He is afraid
that it will bite him
again
and tries to squash
it
He’s not sure
if he has
succeeded and not sure
if he has thrown it
back down the tunnel
but he proceeds
to the end and finds his way
out of the
tunnel where
it is half filled with mud and
he barely can squeeze
under
an old wooden beam
it may be at this
point that he calls back to Aiks
to say that she
may not fit
He
finds himself now high
up on the deck of a wooden house
in an old town
like Carmel
He goes down steep
stairs that become
a ladder that falls
away
He grabs an oak
branch
shinnies down the
trunk
meets Aiks who has climbed out of the channel
before the tunnel
They go into a house
meet on older
man and
two middle-aged women who
could be
his daughters or some other relatives
maybe sisters-in-law etc.
Pahn turns around and
notices
that the pictures on
the wall have been changed
while he was standing
there
…
In a house?
he approaches a woman
in a robe
He is not sure if she
wants him
to come to her
and put his hands in
her robe
but he wants to
and does
He puts his hand
inside her robe feeling
her sides and back and buttocks
He sees that dark
water is dripping
off her robe since
he touched her
as if she were exuding
great quantities of sweat
and the water is dripping
onto the ground
around her
and flowing
over the soil
down-slope behind her
and tree-roots
have come up into
the wet sandy
mucky
soil
in the shape of a fan
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