The sun shone.

Bright yellow in the sky as frail, trembling rays of light filtered down to where it met the ocean. The churning waves crashed against each other in sloppy undulations. An eternity of movement swirling on the surface of a calm ocean. Thick and cold, the depths seemed still, motionless in comparison to the surge of movement on the surface.

Delve just a tad bit deeper.

Push your way through the bubbling waves and dense water and you find it, obscured behind the bright pink corals. The Oyster Reef. An underwater land mass spawned right under the gushing waves, an infestation of hard-shelled molluscs with mouths held, paused in prayer toward the light. An unmoving civilisation that sits frozen at the bottom of a fickle body, twirling humbly one moment and catastrophically ravaging the next.

Graves growing from the rock in humble silence,

But just off toward the corner at the edge of the civilisation, there is an oyster spread open like an opened mouth, soft tongue cradled between the lips. Exposed and vulnerable, it sits at the edge of the grey speckled rock, bathing in the cascading beams of light, unmoving against the rocking of the waves. This particular oyster is small and has barely begun its life, an infant to the rising and retreating tide. Spread open for the world, the curved shell a hand stretched out to the dark expanse of water, the gentle touch of the oyster crab and the cruel sting of the starfish.

And in the unmoving depths of existence, both sides of the hardened shell inched closer toward the apex in fervent prayer, gasping forgiveness at its lips.