In a still hot morning, the tide went out and didn't come back

Host:
The morning heat clung to everything — the kind that seemed to hum softly in the air, not with life, but with stillness. The sky was pale and colorless, a bleached expanse where even the seagulls had grown tired of sound. The sea, stretched before them, lay unnaturally calm, the horizon drawn in a single unwavering line, as if the world had decided to stop breathing.

On the empty shore, the tide had gone out.
And it had not come back.

The sand, damp and glistening, carried the soft print of absence — shells half-buried, seaweed stranded, small pools of water trembling like the remnants of a forgotten pulse. There was no roar, no storm, no divine trumpet. Only silence — the kind that seeps into your bones and asks you to listen to what isn’t there.

Jack stood ankle-deep in the shallows that were no longer moving. His grey eyes fixed on the horizon with that same mix of cynicism and awe that had made him both a skeptic and a poet.

Beside him, Jeeny, small and still, let her brown eyes follow the horizon’s invisible breath. The sunlight caught in her hair, glinting like threads of copper, and the faint wind lifted the hem of her linen dress. She looked at the motionless sea the way one looks at an old friend who has suddenly fallen silent.

Her voice broke the heavy quiet like a soft wave that never reached shore:

"In a still hot morning, the tide went out and didn't come back in. This was not a spectacular event. The sea did not roll up like a scroll, like the sky in Revelations. It quietly withdrew." — Ruth Park

Jeeny:
(softly)
There’s something haunting about that, isn’t there? The way endings don’t always explode. Sometimes they just… fade.

Jack:
(nods slowly)
Yeah. People expect catastrophe to come with noise. But most endings whisper.

Jeeny:
The quiet ones are worse.

Jack:
Because they don’t warn you. They just stop.

Jeeny:
(pauses)
It’s strange. We always imagine the end of the world as thunder and fire, but maybe it’ll be like this — a slow withdrawal. A soft forgetting.

Jack:
(looking out to the motionless water)
Maybe it already happens every day — not to the planet, but to people.

Jeeny:
(whispers)
The tide goes out.

Jack:
And doesn’t come back.

Host:
The heat shimmered across the beach, bending light into thin ribbons. The smell of salt was faint now — replaced by something dry, metallic, ancient. Somewhere far off, a gull cried once and fell silent. The sound didn’t echo; it dissolved.

Jeeny:
You think that’s what Park meant? That the apocalypse isn’t a spectacle — it’s subtle.

Jack:
Yeah. The end of things never arrives with ceremony. It’s in the details — in the unnoticed moments.

Jeeny:
Like love fading without a fight.

Jack:
Or faith thinning out until it’s just habit.

Jeeny:
Or a sea forgetting how to return.

Jack:
Exactly. It’s not the violence of loss that breaks us — it’s its quietness.

Jeeny:
Because quiet demands acceptance.

Jack:
And we’re terrible at that.

Host:
The sun rose higher, bleaching the sand until it glowed white. Jack’s shadow stretched long and thin behind him, merging with Jeeny’s at the edge of the dunes. The two of them looked small against the wide stillness — human silhouettes against eternity.

Jeeny:
It’s terrifying, you know. That something so alive can stop moving and still look beautiful.

Jack:
Maybe that’s the worst kind of death — the beautiful one.

Jeeny:
Because it tricks you into thinking it’s peace.

Jack:
(smiling faintly)
Or because beauty’s the only way nature can say goodbye without breaking your heart.

Jeeny:
(pauses)
That’s cruelly gentle.

Jack:
Gentleness is always cruel — it lingers longer.

Jeeny:
You sound like you’ve lived through a few quiet endings.

Jack:
Everyone has. We just pretend they were loud enough to matter.

Host:
A faint breeze stirred the air, rustling the reeds by the waterline. It was the only motion left. Jeeny bent down, tracing her fingers through a small pool — the last captive shimmer of the sea. Her reflection fractured and reformed with each ripple.

Jeeny:
Do you think the sea meant to leave?

Jack:
You mean — did it choose to?

Jeeny:
Yes. Maybe it got tired of returning.

Jack:
(smiling sadly)
Or maybe it trusted that the land could hold its silence for a while.

Jeeny:
That sounds like faith.

Jack:
Or surrender.

Jeeny:
Is there a difference?

Jack:
Only in who you think you’re giving up to.

Jeeny:
(softly)
Maybe that’s why this feels sacred — like watching a god exhale for the last time.

Jack:
And realizing we were the ones who stopped breathing first.

Host:
The air shimmered, heavy and bright. The horizon blurred — sky and sea blending into one colorless sheet. Even the sound of the waves was memory now, not presence. The earth felt paused, suspended in a silence deeper than any apocalypse could manage.

Jeeny:
You ever notice how we only value moments when they end?

Jack:
Because endings make us notice time.

Jeeny:
And time makes us notice ourselves.

Jack:
That’s the tragedy — we only wake up when something’s gone.

Jeeny:
Maybe that’s why Ruth Park wrote it this way — not as warning, but as reminder. That endings are gentle enough for us to miss.

Jack:
Until the quiet finally gets too loud.

Jeeny:
(smiling faintly)
And then we call it revelation.

Jack:
But it’s just reality.

Jeeny:
The slow undoing of what we thought would last forever.

Host:
A cloud drifted lazily across the sun, dimming the world. The light softened, and for a moment, the colors of the sand and sky deepened — as though the planet had taken a single, measured breath.

Jeeny:
You know, maybe the tide didn’t vanish. Maybe it just changed shape — became something else.

Jack:
You mean, it didn’t die — it transformed.

Jeeny:
Exactly. Everything withdraws only to return in another form.

Jack:
But we fear the space in between.

Jeeny:
Because we mistake stillness for loss.

Jack:
(pauses)
Then maybe faith — real faith — is learning to wait through the silence.

Jeeny:
(softly)
And to love even the absences.

Host:
The wind picked up slightly, scattering fine grains of sand across their feet. The shimmer of heat above the ground made the horizon dance again — a faint illusion of motion returning to the stillness. Jeeny’s dress fluttered, and Jack turned his face toward the wind, his expression unreadable.

Host:
And as the heat deepened, Ruth Park’s words lingered — not as prophecy, but as quiet revelation:

That endings do not roar;
they withdraw, softly, like water leaving shore.

That the sacred hides not in spectacle,
but in the ordinary moment that stops existing without fanfare.

That the world does not need to collapse to end —
it only needs to grow still.

And that the sea,
in all its wisdom,
teaches us the hardest lesson of all —

how to leave quietly,
how to let go without sound,
how to become silence
without disappearing.

The tide remained gone,
the sky unbroken,
and on that shimmering, breathless shore,
Jack and Jeeny stood —
two small figures waiting,
not for the world to end,
but for it to begin again
in silence.