It Floated By

"York Minster in the Fog" by Karli Watson (Flickr)

They had been rowing the boat for a few hours. Semi-submerged trees being their main obstacle but occasionally they came across buildings that barely broke out of the water, these had become especially numerous and dangerous in the last half an hour.

Evening was now drawing in and they were becoming desperate to sight dry land. The three men in the boat had heard the stories as children but never really believed them until today. They had been told of houses under the sea. Whole towns and cities had disappeared under the climate change floods along with the thousands of people that once lived here.

Mist began to form all around them and very soon they were rowing almost blindly through the water and mist. One of the men had to keep a spare oar out front of the small boat to protect it in case of collision and the rowers themselves had to row with extreme caution.

The mist thickened further and the men became very quiet as did all nature around them; evening began to draw in and nightfall was at best only an hour away.

All of a sudden the lookout shouted out, scared out of his wits at the sight he now saw. Floating out of the mist they saw this huge building sailing towards them. The last of the sun hitting the higher parts of the building caused the mist to radiate an aura of light in the air, the likes of which none of the men had ever seen before. They heard the movement of water, it was loud, much louder than when their boat moved through the water, yet there was very little wake, the small boat barely rocked.

What was this building? How was it floating?

The building floated by, or did they float by the building? None of them were really sure of what they saw that day, they could barely describe their experience to each other let alone those they met after.

They never did find dry land, they slept in the small boat after having secured it to a submerged and dying tree. The boat was rocked gently by the ebb and flow of the water. They rowed for several hours the following day to find this huge building again but they never found it yet they found the tops of the houses they remembered from the day before.

©2011 Trevor Litchfield