this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore

The ocean has always been there, since the very beginning, Ina’s father had told her. It gave life and it took it, and there was no bias in any of it. Great things swam in its depths, creatures of sizes many times larger than a human’s, with even longer lifespans. Ina had been born next to the ocean, and knew its salt better than her own salt water tears. “There’s a balance to it, my dear,” Her father had said, Ina sitting next to him as he worked at repairing a thick rope, fingers deftly braiding the fibers together, a similarly tied braid in Ina’s dark hair already. “The ocean may give, but only so much. We have to give back as well.”The ocean had its punishments for overindulgence, waves and storms. But the ocean was what gave life and took it, and there was no bias in any of it. Seafoam and salt, sand and the scales of a long dead creature, formed into a manifestation of the sea’s love. It wanted to give, taking was just the balance of it all. So it gave in the way it had learned, tried to say sorry for what it had to do, with a helping hand.