This story is a response to the alerts following the Tsunami that struck Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula yesterday.

A response to the need to tackle climate change.

Listen–when it calls.

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The 2035 oceans were a crystal blue–watchful, ready to lap over unsuspecting coastal dwellers at a moment’s notice.

The waves had stopped their sentient whispers–ones they had sent out decades ago, when they had fallen on closed ears.. Now, they sent frenzied alerts.

About them drawing far back–gathering breath. Low tide came with blinking mobile screens, their owners’ soft skins still caressed by the sun.

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Maia couldn’t hear the tide–she mapped waves and tide lines by touch and the skills of a well-honed nose.

The cartographer made up for what she couldn’t hear with a trait only she had–she knew the ocean.

She smelled sea salt long before waves appeared.

Its texts haunting vibrations on glass.

Their instructions.

Their warnings.

Which none heeded when she gave them.

Pish.

Tosh.

Their inane static was her countdown.

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She got up on July 30th to the ping of another cryptic text.

Grainy and wavy.

“7 breaths left.”

The subtle threat pushed her to carve it it driftwood. Power was fading; cell towers were losing their stability.

The words weren’t prophecy–just the result of poor carbon footprints on the beach.

Higher ground.

She ran to it–not to escape, but to heed.

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A wait of ten hours. Then, a seismic shift beneath 30 feet of water.

The sea bellowed. Then pulled back.

Hermit crabs crawling for their lives on a too-vast shore.

Then–they stuck.

Overwhelming the people Maia’s village, all in mid-prayer.

All swept away–clutching salt-screened phones.

The message: “Zero breaths. Tag. You’re it.”

There was a final ping that filtered through the clouds:

“You did not listen.”

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Ten years later, in a classroom built on high ground, children examined a piece of driftwood during a science lesson.

It was hot–three degrees hotter than a decade earlier.

The teacher held up the driftwood.

“Does anyone remember Maia?”

A raised hand.

Tentative.

“Wasn’t she the cartographer who tried to tell our village about the Tsunami of 2004? It swallowed the village. No one listened.”

Then, a few whispers in the class.

” She smelled the wave before it crashed.”

Outside, a figure, unseen.

A fingertip pressed against a glass window.

The teacher’s screen pings–faintly.

“You heard–remember.”

Maps work–read them.

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