A Short Story by Story Realm

Illustrated by Story Realm

Narrated by Alden Phelps

I WAS privileged to be chosen right out of University as a ship's Naturalist for an expedition charting passage through the seas just beyond the known channels of the Realm. The seas! What an opportunity to explore this foreign realm of heaving water, these rolling depths through which mysterious, unknown creatures stalk and frolic! Heaving water, rolling depths—I was seasick the entire journey. Barely ventured off my hammock. They kept telling me I'd soon find my sea legs but it wasn't to be.

There were a few calm days when I forced my shaking limbs onto the deck and I was glad to have done it. There is nothing in this whole vast world like the feeling of being held aloft by an insignificant bundle of wood and canvas above, what I can only assume to be miles of water, with water in every direction but the sky, lapping and rolling . . . well (clears throat delicately), we'll skip the part about rolling . . .

We know so little about the sea. The greater part of the Earth's surface seems to be covered by its salty magnificence. In fact, as our best explorers venture further and further into unknown waters, we are beginning to perceive the continents themselves as enormous land masses surrounded in their entirety by oceans. Such grand names they've been given—The Atlantic, The Pacific, The Indian and Arctic Oceans, the Great Southern Seas. I like to imagine myself standing on our moon, looking back at our world. I think that I would see this whole planet of ours as a small blue orb hanging in the sky, lit by the sun. Prevailing thought of course assumes that it would be brown or green, but with such vast, sparkling expanses of water, would it not be blue? Don't you think so?

We know a bit of what lies beneath the waves from what we can see on top. On my own ill-fated expedition we enjoyed the playful attention of porpoises and endured the harrowing eye of the whale. Flying fish tossed themselves onto our decks and jellyfish oozed in the waters by our side. Our hooks and nets brought up marvels & curiosities from the deep—creatures of preposterous size and shape, some with teeth . . . I have never seen such teeth before or since—mouths full of splinters and spikes . . . (shuddering) Shugh! What monsters & devils, what great delicacies, what marvels might we discover if we could venture further into those great, heaving depths?

Diving bells allow us some small measure of exploration beneath the surface of the seas, but in truth they only serve to whet the appetite. We know that the crust of continents extends out into the sea for miles as a great shelf, then drops off in a steep slope into depths unknown. I have a theory . . . well, I confess, it came to me in a dream in my misery as we sailed . . . But I saw the deeps of the ocean floor, and they were a landscape all their own—mountains, trenches, volcanoes, plateaus—all underwater, with vast schools of fishes and all manner of curious creatures swimming through, much like people in the scape of a busy town. And, most interesting of all, the land, our land, our islands and continents around which the oceans crest and flow, was merely the top of underwater formations—a brave thought! We take the ground underfoot for granted, as if it is a certainty, as if it came first and stands unshakable. But what if, in fact, it is the oceans that have receded to reveal the land and they could cover it again at will? What then? What great mysteries the oceans hold!