text: ***Warning, people do die. *** We were told to stay calm. To ignore the waves as the beasts rose from the depths and pummelled into each other. As they hammered against the waters for days. Fluctuations of their fight caused the waves to upsurge and crush our homes. Finally, one fell, the blue waves embracing it and tugging it down further than we had ever gone, down from whence it came. We thought that was the end. We were told it was over. Told we could rebuild the houses battered by the waves and so we did. We tore down trees to fix walls and we cleaned the floors of seaweed. But then the beast rose once more. We watched from the beaches as it advanced to the island. We screamed as ripples from its movements became tsunamis that crashed down on the shores, ripping away rebuilt houses, and dragging them to the ocean. We sent our messenger ship to the mainland, who had sworn they would protect us. Who had taken over our government with the promise of safety. Who had made an oath. The beast descended onto the water washed sand of what used to be our beaches. It advanced inland, bringing devastation with every crashing step. It turned to us as we ran from it. Some of us found shelter and other found the claws of the beast. It took soul after soul, listened to scream after scream. A reply came from the mainland. A messenger boat came to us from our guardians across the sea. “A huge beast attacking your shore?” They called us liars trying to rob them of their resources. They said they would not fall victim to such nonsense. The beast killed more every day, finding our shelters, and destroying them, removing safe harbour after safe harbour from our reach. To take more lives into its bowels. Again, we called for aid from the ones we had trusted. We asked for boats, food, and water. Simple things that were easy to give. They scorned us again. They said they were too busy to amuse us. They said they had real problems to deal with. We read these words, huddled away from the sunlight. We read them scorning us, we read them pushing us to the side like lying children. We read them abandoning us. Yet we still held out, we sent for help as our land was invaded. The one messenger boat sped back and forth as we became more isolated from the world and from ourselves. We told them just to come and see. We told them we were not lying. We told them everything we knew, but we knew less and less as we lost connection to the other shelters. No one wanted to run between them anymore. They told us that we were going to steal their boat. They told us we were liars. They told us they knew all about the ‘trick’ we were playing. We sent a final plea. Certain we were the last shelter still standing on our lush island. We poured every heart we had left into one last letter. We spent weeks making it the best we could, weeks working to convince our ‘guardians’ our ‘protectors’ across the waves. But as the little boat left the shore, as the captain took the two passengers he could fit. The beast came. It saw movement, it scuttled across the water covered hills and plunged down at the boat. It took our message, our one safe line and our hopes. We ran. We ran as long as we could. It chased us. It chased us as long as we could run. We came to the water; we could not run anymore. It crested like a wave, ready to crash down on us. Some managed to swim away. The rest were taken into the beast. We watched our fellows end as we struggled to stay still and float in the turmoil of the waves. That is when we knew they were not coming. That is when we knew they lied. That is when we knew our allies across the sea were too far to care what happened to the island they swore to protect. But that is not where our story ends. We stayed still. A few of us were lost to the waves but we had no choice. When the beast left to search for more of us, we headed for land. Tired, we were forced to rest in the open. Fearing that the beast would remember us. In the morning we made our move. We built rafts out of fallen trees that floated in the water. We set out, far from the beast and into the waters it had risen from. We drifted as far as we dared. We found an island. Isolated but free from the destruction of the beast. We started again, this time without the mainland. Without our ‘guardians’. This time we flourished. This time we didn’t worry about the other people because they would never worry about us. That was our history. It was better than theirs. The beast moved forward, past the remains of our old home. It found the mainland and all the other lands. It did not care for the swords and the arrows thrown at it. It did not care for the shouting and the screaming. The people split into chaos once they knew their weapons could not save them, so maybe it was good that we didn't have any. They ran and fought each other rather than hiding like us. You might even call them brave, though we prefer the term stupid. The beast didn't care that they fought each other, it probably made it easier. We wonder if they ran to an island in the middle of nowhere like we did. Honestly it's unlikely such fools could survive. Though we don’t care that much... After all they didn’t care about us, we're happier like this anyway... free from their greed and their righteousness, maybe the beast was doing us a favour.