Dating : The Drowned Lands

“Gram,” you say, as you sink into the hot water, “I had a dream.”

Gram is in bed, as usual, but you hear a sleepy response.

“I was at the beach, and I was looking out to sea. But there wasn’t any sea. It was all hills and valleys and rivers.” You have never been to the seaside, yet you knew, somehow, what the sea should look like, a grey expanse of white-flecked waves. Instead, in the dream, there were just low rolling hills, lush green grassland dotted with thick stands of trees, the glint of lazy rivers running between them, stretching to the misty horizon.

You hear Gram stirring, sitting up a little in bed, “You were dreaming of the Drowned Lands, child, where you were born.”

“Why are the Drowned Lands drowned, Gram? Will the sea come here, too?”

“Don’t fret yourself about that, dear. The land breathes in and out, very slowly. And very slowly, it changes. Mountains rise up, and fall again. Lands appear and disappear. Rivers take new courses. But mostly that happens slowly, so very slowly. If the sea starts to come here, we will know in good time, and we will move again to somewhere dry.”

Her words puzzle you. “But we have always lived here.”

“You don’t remember, child, you were very young when we left that place.”

As you bask in the cauldron, you breath in and out, drowning vast civilizations of soap below the waves, then raising up the mountains and draining the valleys again. You make cities and towers with the bubbles and join them with causeways. Then tire of the game and rinse the whole lot off.

“Gram, why doesn’t Mór use soap?”

If Gram hears you, she doesn’t respond. A little later you hear her gentle snoring, so you tap the cauldron to drain it, and clamber out.