Our preacher used to say that tide and tempest brought every ship to rest in the ocean's greatest depths and they'd bring us all to rest there in its loving embrace as well. We might not have believed him and he might have stopped speaking to the god we knew a long time ago but we still stayed, mostly to hear what nonsense would come out next. Hell, we even helped move the church to a cliff near the sea for him.
The old sailors appreciated his words far more than the rest of our coastal town, something about the way he praised and feared the sea resonated with them in ways we didn't understand until the last storm. As always we gathered everyone by the church to take a headcount before taking communal buses further inland but the preacher insisted we come in for a quick prayer first.
It all happened so fast. One moment we were sitting in silence with the world raging outside, barely being kept out by old wooden planks and older stone walls. Next thing we knew there was an almighty crash and we were falling into the churning waves.
For a few seconds were back in the clifftop church and the preacher was telling us that god was pleased with us, wanted us to join it in the depths where dead ships and dead sailors go. We all woke up washed ashore, lungs feeling stiff and skin crusted with dry salt but alive and unharmed.
There was no sign of the preacher and a few of the older sailors swore he led us all back to land one-by-one. They said he held our hands, helped us breathe the sea until we'd reached the surface and on his final trip he just never came back.
We rebuilt the church but never called for a new preacher - how could anyone replace him after this?
Instead we all sit by the shore every Sunday, listening to his sermons coming from below the waves.
Another storm is approaching and when it arrives our congregation will be united again.
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