CW: This script is designed to put the reader into trance and leave them a mindless, drooling mess (before waking them at the end). It uses lots of imagery of water and the ocean, so if you have any fear of these things, or don't want to be hypnotised, please don't read on- there's plenty of great stuff on this website, this one thing just isn't for you. If you do want to be hypnotised, then please, read on, and enjoy...
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Moonlight glittering over the gentle waves of the ocean at night might trick someone into believing it is entirely serene. Underneath the wine dark surface of the sea, however, there is a constant, slow, yet persistent flow forwards and backwards.
The water may look entirely quiet, but given enough time water can level cliffs, or carve through mountains. When one combines water with time and persistence it can be one of the most powerful forces on earth.
The light of a sunset bouncing off the crests and troughs of the sea might well give the impression that it is passive. Peaceful. Calm. But under the waves the water continues to flow. Backwards and forwards.
With time and persistence water can level anything.
If you have ever walked along a beach you may well have come across what seems like a smooth glittering gem of green or blue. The rays of the sun bouncing and reverberating within the gem, illuminating it on the beach. Some time ago, however, this gem would have been a bottle, or a glass, cracked, broken, left to decay. But given time, and persistence, it was taken by the water and smoothed. The water took the broken bottle as the tides flowed past it, dragging it into the waves. Accepting the shards in its gentle embrace, and slowly, with time and persistence the water would have flowed over the edges, smoothing it out, reshaping it. The most gentle grindstone in the world, carving the shards into beautiful gems.
Water can do that with anything. Given time and patience it can take anything and just smooth it down to nothing. A jagged cliff can be slowly worn down at the base, smoothed out, carved away, until eventually the cliff itself will collapse. Those slow, gentle waves caring it away, piece by piece.
The most amazing thing about this process is that because water seems so gentle, because it seems so innocent and so slow one wouldn't be able to tell that is carving something away.
At any given point in time the state of the cliff seems static. It is impossible to tell that with each calm, gentle wave that it is being worn away. Worn down. Carved and smoothed out.
Eventually, given time and persistence, that cliff will be so worn down, so smoothed, so carved out that it will just collapse.
Collapsing down and giving itself away fully into that water. As soon as those boulders are enveloped by the water the process can begin even faster. At that point the water can surround the rocks entirely. Flowing forwards and back around them, the waves turning it over and wrapping around them.
Gently. Not even noticeably. That rock will continue to degrade. To be smoothed out. To have its every imperfection gently worn down. Persistence and time. Turned and rolled and carved and smoothed.
And if that rock had any cracks in it begin with the water would just stream through, using that extra surface area to pull it apart, to carve it out.
Removing all imperfections. Removing all cracks and features. Removing anything let might have let it distinguish itself as what it was before it began to be worn down.
Small bits and pieces might break off and be smoothed in turn- the more pieces that break off the faster they would in turn be smoothed out. Reduced to something that didn't even slightly resemble what the were before they fell. A cliff reduced to stones. Stones smoothed to pebbles. Pebbles smoothed to sand.
All it takes is time and persistence. And water is so incredibly persistent. So incredibly focused on its task of polishing, rounding, reducing. It all happens at a rate that is entirely unnoticeable, so by the time the cliff falls, by the time it sinks under the waves, by the time it starts to break apart it is already too late.
By that point it is being overwhelmed and smoothed and rounded and polished. All imperfections, all cracks, all features just taken away. Anything that might help it to resemble what it once was just reduced to nothing.
A cliff reduced to boulders. Boulders reduced to stones. Stones reduced to pebbles. Pebbles reduced to sand. Sand that can float through the sea, entirely carried by the tides, giving itself completely to the water around it. Maybe the sand will just keep floating through the ocean, encountering other rocks, helping the water to reduce them to nothing, continuing to so gently reduce everything to oneness. Maybe instead it will sink down to the bottom of the ocean. Too heavy to be left afloat.
The currents may allow the tiny grains of sands to float and drift in their own little vortex for some time. But eventually they will just sink down to the ocean floor. Eventually they will just become one with the bed of sand. Becoming entirely one with the system that they were worn down into.
What had been an entire cliff, with its own imperfections. With its own cuts and scars, with its complex surface carved out through the weathering of wind and sun just utterly broken down and entirely homogenised by the simple, gentle movements of the ocean that are almost imperceptible.
With the moonlight shining down on the tops of the waves, or the gentle oranges and reds of a sunset glinting over the tides it would be impossible to tell that the water, with time and persistence is just wearing everything away.
Smoothing it.
Carving it.
Shaping it.
Making it entirely its own.
Done so gently and carefully that one wouldn't even be able to tell that this water can flow and glide over everything to eventually let it become nothing. Eventually letting it become entirely one with the ocean, just a part of the system. The grains of sand that it creates used to break down and wear away other rocks. An overwhelming force of something so incredibly calm.
With every crack, with every tiny opening anything can be broken apart and broken down. Smoothed and pulled apart so slowly it would be impossible to tell. Impossible to tell if one is far beyond the realm of returning to anything that once resembled themselves. Any imperfections smoothed out. Any resistance to the waves broken down.
Those grains of sand, so small and imperceptible now, so entirely smoothed out and broken away, inevitably just sinking to the bed of the ocean. Going so incredibly deep, never to be whole again.
The deepest parts of the ocean are more of an enigma to us that the landscapes of entire planets that aren't our own. So once something starts to drift down and down into the ocean its so easy to lose it. So easy for something so small, so smoothed down, so featureless, to be entirely lost and dropped away.
Formless and peaceful as it spirals down in its own little vortex.
Broken down. Broken apart. Smoothed away. Featureless. Lost.
That once proud cliff entirely pulled apart and pulled down. Swirling and sinking. Drifting through the ocean floor. Entirely one with the system that broke it and reshaped it. A tool that the system can repurpose. Something new that is just a mechanism by which the system can act.
Broken down.
Broken apart.
