Hail is on the sea. It bounces on the waves and disappears into leaping froth. Some sinks quietly into oblivion, some drops like feather snow but always there is a flash of water as it gives up the ghost and becomes the mighty ocean. From the freedom of the skies it has fallen into the masses which stretch into the dying sun, sucking down the glowing orb to rest beneath the waves.
Ants are struggling five miles from the seashore. Flicks of antennae send messages speeding across the ranks like wildfire into the nest. There is silence, then the patter of one thousand redcoat soldiers marching through crumbling tunnels reaches the antennae of the weary. They fight ever more fiercely, and soon the swarm of reinforcements covers the Enemy until his skin seems to crawl and squirm, shining like red mercury. From here, from there, the army is endless, streaming from some reserve vault deep in the earth with chatters and war cries. Ants are crushed and dying in poor heaps of tangled legs, here and there jerking weakly in the throes of death, but their brothers march over them, crushing broken limbs and snapping thoraxes like enemy shells. The antennae flicks down the line. This Enemy is fierce. Despite wearing a bodysuit of biting things, he continues to stomp his feet and bat his hands, and more reinforcements swarm in to attack his toes. At last the reserves of the nest are deplete, but the Enemy is falling, slowly like an oak tree, and the army covers every inch of his body, pulling him down to meet their jaws. He is dead, but all that can be seen is a roiling mass of red.
In the morning, the sun rises anew from a gentle sea and shines as it always has. Five miles from the seashore a pile of bones lies fleshless and white.
