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The Floating Child Thomas Wiloch
 

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From high in the air, we look down upon an endless expanse of blue water that spreads out to an empty horizon. The sun is shining. The water sparkles. Endless waves. We seem to be flying over the waves, slowly, unhurried. Far below us can be seen a shadow we are casting upon the water's restless surface. After a time, a white figure is seen in the distance, floating on the water. Our pace quickens noticeably, aiming at this object. We drop down, skimming over the waves that now hurry under us in a kind of blue and white blur. The white object grows larger in size as we approach, until it looms over us like a glistening iceberg or the throne of God. We circle the object, rising a bit to look down upon it closely. It is a baby—a naked baby of immense size, floating on its back in the water and happily kicking its legs about, splashing with its pudgy hands. As we circle the child slowly, sometimes coming so close that an elbow or ear or foot overwhelms our vision, we see that the child is an unusually luminous shade of white, a piano-key white, a slick-tile kind of white. We see too that the child is growing perceptibly before us, in jerky spurts of expansion. We must dip and thrust now and then to avoid one or another of these growth spurts, an arm reaching out, the head expanding oddly. We do not want to be knocked from the air.  These spurts of growth seem not to faze the child, who smiles, purses its lips to coo at its toes and fingers. It leans back to get its hair wet, then sends a spray of cold water high into the sparkling air. We watch the child frolicking happily in the water, much as any child does, as we slowly circle and circle round, rising a bit higher with every circuit. And as we rise, the child grows smaller beneath us, shrinking to the size of a house, a car, a sheet of typing paper, a business card, a button....