I wrote a version of this piece to a 15 minute prompt in my Saturday writing group, edited a little afterwards, and performed a reading of the above version at the monthly open mic. This is fiction.
I am an island, surrounded by water, floating. It’s impossible to reach me, that’s how much water we’re talking about. Much more water than Columbus crossed when he finally thought he saw the shores of India, while he already covered more Ocean than he believed existed.
And even if you would somehow cross the deep, rocking distance between us, you wouldn’t be able to step a foot on me. There’s a wall built along my shores, all of them. A colossal, uninterrupted wall, broader than the Chinese wall and higher, much higher. And there are guards walking these walls – can you imagine them? They are lankier than any man you’ve ever seen, with eyes big as plates - an evolutionary mutation needed to peer over all this water, just in case a foreign entity, like yourself, would be brave enough to cross the infinite, silver space between us, get too curious about my vastness, and come too close. My Giant Guards fire at will, with bows and arrows fitting their size, which is no size for you.
I’m more of an island than Manhattan, Great Britain or the Mont Saint Michel in France’s Bretagne, which is just a church on a pile of land where you can walk to when the tide is just right. That little sanctuary has nothing on me. I’m an island far more secluded and sacred. I don’t care about the tides, don’t know they exist even, and if they do, they surely don’t exist for me.
Even if you would – by a chance or miracle – get too close, be warned: waves crash into me, at a speed and with force that would destroy you and the land you live upon. I reckon you’ve never known a power that destructive.
I’m a myth, that’s what I am, an island people talked about for centuries, but never discovered and perhaps Plato wrote about me. There’s no proof of my existence but I am more real than you’ll ever comprehend. I’m more exciting, richer, more developed and more true than Atlantis, because I will never sink – you won’t seek me at the depths of the Seas, but you will never encounter the land that I am.
I am an island and I am your curse. The more you try to unearth me, the further I drift. It’s an endless game that I will always win, because you mean nothing to me. I am not created by men and no man shall conquer. I’m floating in this Ocean, forever moving so you can never be sure where to find me, but that will never stop you from trying.