The Little People in the Rocks

They’re a community of tiny little people. They live under the rocks near the harbour. You’ll never see them, they’re shy of people, generally rather scared. They are there though. When they come out they work in teams, scavenging what they can from the rocks, prying off shellfish to feed their little rock village. There’ll usually be a lookout, most times two. One will look out for crabs, their biggest predator and the threat that they all fear the most. Other things will attack them, the smaller predators they can fight off and the bigger ones, well if they attack there’s nothing a look out could do. Crabs though, crabs are danger. Most of them are the same size as the people, give or take. They’re stronger than the people and better armoured. Their pincers are the things of nightmares, not easily combated.

The other lookout will watch for the tide. The tide dictates their life, much more than the sun ever could. Their days are determined by when they can find food, not when they can see best, although they have developed very good eyesight in low light conditions. Generally they find the dark tides easiest anyway, there are fewer prey and hardly ever big people about. The big people are possibly the only thing more terrifying than the crabs.

When the water starts to lap up over the rocks again the lookout on the tide will give a signal. Whatever they’ve managed to gather that tide will have to do, sometimes it’s feast, a group might manage to get a few whole oysters, or muscles. Other times it’s famine, all they can do is hope they find something and hope like hell that they can get it back to their homes before the tide ends.

On a rare “bright tide” when the sun was up and the water was down. This tribe of little people came across something that they didn’t have words to describe. It was a plastic piece of rubbish, they’d noticed more and more rubbish in the last few years. But this rubbish was different, it had something on the top of it, frothy and brown. One of the braver men thought it looked edible, perhaps just hopefully, the bright tides were always the hardest. Whatever his motivations he scooped a little bit up with his finger and tasted it. It was bitter, surely, but it had an appeal, was definitely edible, the others rushed to try it. It almost had an immediate effect, their tiny eyes opened wider, they talked more and more loudly, the tired search of the bright tide had quickly turned to energy and movement. They didn’t have a word for coffee, had no idea what it was going to do when they tried it, but they sure liked it now that they had.

It probably didn’t matter that the lookouts had come down from the high rock. They’d tried the coffee froth as well, but it wasn’t their fault what happened. There’s no way that a lookout could stop a gull, or even warn the others in enough time. Gulls are just too fast, you don’t see them coming. They’re a natural disaster that arrives out of nowhere and shakes the entire earth. Once one of them arrives they all flock in. It was like a battle scene with dive-bombers destroying an unprepared target. The screeching of the birds was like the whining of a bomb falling. It was all finished very quickly, the little people didn’t have a chance, their moment of distraction was their last moment.