“Ocean Dawn”

“Skylar stepped faster now, pulled strongly forward by the ocean’s magnetism. A few more strides brought him to the final path stone. His shoes sank into soft sand. A great hush enveloped the world as it prepared to celebrate a sacred mystery. The ocean stretched out in a rippled, plumbeous sheet beyond, below, and before him, as far as his eyes could see. It was half-hidden, like a vast silent army crouched in shadow awaiting the trumpet call that would signal it to rise up glorious. The sky, mottled on high with long crocodilian forms made up of altostratus clouds and below with solid iceberg walls of stratocumulus, ranged in hue from salvia, to gentian, to aqua blue. The surf plashed gently onto the beach with the regularity of a sleeper’s deep breaths. Stray gulls flapped above him with the half-heartedness of the just-wakened. A thin line of red surmounted by yellow appeared on the horizon, as if a distant tidal wave of lava were heading for the shore. The upper clouds to the north grew dusky pink, those to the south, hyacinthine and livid. An island of molten yellow suddenly burst forth in the center of the horizon. The waves formed level steps, each higher than the one before it, leading out toward the rising sun. A line of perfectly spaced pelicans, like horizontal brackets, winged across the sky in unison, a scrolling announcement that the feature would soon appear. Then the sea turned the color of rosé wine; the icebergs shattered into thousands of pieces of tangerine graupel; and the crocodiles segmented themselves into oblongs of lilac gray rimmed in deep violet. Skylar watched as the ocean, the horizon, the clouds, and the sky merged into a cohesive, infrangible whole. No longer was there any difference between sea, vapor, and air: they were merely different shades of an identical color. An arc of gold rose up above the lip of the horizon and with it came an up-spreading cone of persimmony light. A wavy band of electric lemon shimmied from the horizon to a point a hundred yards off the beach. As the sun-arc silently swelled, soaring, curving, and swooping seagulls let out a chorus of welcome. Great rays jetted out from the star, reducing the clouds to shadows and burning blazing lines through the fabric of the heavens.”