How do you turn a tide? You don’t, probably. You just wait for the turning of the tide.

But then again, maybe some tides can be turned. Metaphorical tides might be turnable, for instance, because some force needs to make them do that, right? Real tides, however, cannot be turned by human hands. Maybe we can build structures that rebuff the tides, but turn them? Transform them? Not by any intentional means. Too fluid and too vast and too chaotic is the sea, with a nearly infinite range of possible variables to account for. The best thing to do is just let it do what it wants.

Honestly, I wonder how much of this world’s creation was just setting things in motion and letting them find their own equilibrium. If that is the case, then one who sees and knows all, even down to the most minute details, could very well be able to nudge things in a desired direction if one wanted. Hence miracles.

Perhaps miracles are the result of these nudges in which small and simple components of a vast, complex system are influenced or moved in some way, and that in turn impacts the rest of the system in such a manner that creates a dramatic change. Time it just right, set it in just the right place, and execute it in just the right way, and you’ll end up with that system finding a new equilibrium at exactly the right moment to accomplish your purposes.

So how do you turn a tide? It may be as simple as killing a few fish in a specific place or misplacing a few grains of sand or sending a meteor into the moon. Not a large one, just a small one that slightly adjusts its gravitational pull. Perhaps that meteor came from another world that was destroyed for some reason. Maybe it has someone’s name inscribed on it, and every little detail of that inscription has a minor effect on the moon’s gravitational pull. As a result, the tides are adjusted ever so slightly, and they do so as an echo of the name inscribed in the meteor. Thus, the tides speak a name long forgotten, and those who know how to listen to the tides might be able to preserve that name in memory forever after.

They might also ascribe more significance to it than it’s due, but whatever.

Consider for a moment a world in which breathing attracts ants. Maybe it already does so. Who could believe that breathing attracts ants? Truth is, no one could, and no one will, except for people who are habitually wrong because breathing doesn’t actually attract ants except in those few instances in which it might. Honestly, in the grand total of possibilities that ever could be, there might be a situation in which elements have aligned in just such a way that breathing may, in fact, attract ants. How many scenarios those would be, I do not know. They might be few. They might be more numerous than all the books in the Library of Babel, and those possibilties might only be a fraction of all that is possible ever.

That, I think, would be a miracle, but we would probably never notice it happening. All we would know is that there are ants.

Nothing is impossible, but many things are improbable.

Well, they’re improbable until someone misplaces a few grains of sand somewhere. Then, of course, they are inevitable.

The Astral Wanderer is brought to you by means of meteor. Share this with your friends, though preferably refrain from doing so by means of meteor. The tides might work though. Also, consider supporting The Astral Wanderer on Patreon. All proceeds go toward finding a misplaced handful of sand. Really.