A sea decided it wanted to be a person. It made skin from sand and eyes from sunken boats. It chose coral reefs for hands and made legs from whales propped tail-to-tail. Its stomach was a school of fish; for a heart it formed a whirlpool.

The sea became a woman, and she gathered her body and stepped forward onto what was once the shore. She turned and sat with her whale-legs out and looked over the vast empty seabed. But now that she was human, she missed the sea.