🌊🌊TSUNAMI🌊🌊

Chapter One (Continued)

By Tessa Harvey

Malawi thumped along kicking stones. He had thought he could leave at fourteen but had been refused. His recent dreams of being the best fisherman, of the other men clapping him on the back in praise, talking excitedly, evaporated, leaving bitter resentment.

Suddenly the ground moved beneath his feet and he fell, hitting his head hard against a rock. 

Inali had also felt the quake and was screaming in fear. She had been dreaming happily of writing stories and had even begun one when the world around her literally shook. The ground cracked and plants crumbled and fell. She tried to run and stumbled almost at once over broken rocks and ferns and little yellow cattails. Then she saw a hand sliding up.

It moved, scaring her even more and Malawi crawled out from the fringe of beach bushes. He looked at Inala,dazed and uncertain.

Then they both heard the urgent summons of the school bell jangling harshly in the utter sudden stillness - the emergency signal for the whole village.

But what they didn't hear was the ocean; that roar and swell, the vast ancient cadence that had, since birth, given time and cadence to all their days.

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