Dagon, Temporarily

More about Dagon, Temporarily

They built Dagon out of sand because stone was too confident.

The children began it. A tail first. Always begin with a tail; it commits you to the sea. By noon he had shoulders. By three he had a beard with admirable administrative curls. By evening he leaned against a slab of damp sand pretending to be eternal.

The man who supervised nothing said, “This is theology.”

Another man, who had brought a thermos of something optimistic, replied, “No, this is coastal engineering.”

Dagon stared past them with the dignified vacancy of all temporary gods. His mouth was open as if delivering a lecture no one would attend. Grains slid from his chin in quiet apostasy.

A small boy adjusted the fish cloak over Dagon’s back. “He needs authority,” the boy said.

Authority arrived in the form of a seagull and left immediately.

Someone carved symbols into the slab beside him — not real cuneiform, but close enough to suggest bureaucracy. The slab leaned. Dagon leaned. The sea rehearsed.

An older man lay on the sand nearby, not terrified, merely inconvenienced. He squinted up at the sculpture and asked, “Is he agricultural?”

“Yes,” said the first man. “But seasonally.”

The tide, like a clerk with impeccable timing, advanced.

Dagon did not protest. Sand gods rarely do. He understood dissolution as policy. His beard lost coherence first. The left eye retreated into abstraction. The tail maintained composure longer than expected.

“Perhaps,” said the thermos man, now philosophical, “this is how civilizations begin.”

“Or end,” said the boy, who had practical experience with collapse.

Water reached the slab. The symbols blurred into persuasive silence. Dagon’s arm slid from its posture of meaningful gesture into something resembling surrender.

The older man sat up.

“I liked him better when he was provisional,” he said.

The sea, thorough but not malicious, rearranged everything into flatness. Dagon became suggestion. The slab became rumor. The fish cloak returned to its elemental condition.

No thunder. No sermon. Just foam.

Later, on dry ground, they would speak of him with unusual certainty. They would say he rose. They would say he judged. They would say he required offerings.

But in truth he required only moisture and an audience willing to confuse erosion with revelation.

By morning there was nothing left but a smooth stretch of beach and the faint impression of a tail, which might have been a trick of light.

The boy drew a new line in the sand.

“Again?” he asked.

The sea considered the proposal.

And waited.