This Ocean Was A City Once | short story eBook

🏆 Winner - First Place, Conflux 2025 Short Story Competition

A flooded planet. A decade-long wait for justice. One daughter's desperate choice.

Naia's world is disappearing beneath the waves: one storm at a time.

On Moon's End, she and her family cling to the top floors of a drowned skyscraper, waiting for the payout that will change everything. For ten years, they've survived on determination, vegetable plots, and hope that Wenstron Dynamics will finally pay for flooding their planet.

But hope doesn't hold back hurricanes. And corporations are experts at delay.

When the trader ship stops coming and the lawyers announce another year-long extension, Naia faces an impossible choice: stay loyal to her mother's dream of rebuilding their world, or save her family before they become another statistic in a corporate lawsuit that outlasts the people it destroys.

With her grandmother's spirit journey incomplete and no guaranteed refuge waiting, leaving means abandoning everything: including the compensation they've sacrificed a decade to claim.

But staying might cost them their lives.

A devastating story of climate displacement, corporate accountability, and the weight of impossible choices, This Ocean Was A City Once explores what you preserve when everything is sinking, and how far you'll go to save the ones you love.

Judges said:
"Crisp, concise prose that is also evocative of the challenges faced by refugees wherever they may be..."
"The characters were well-written with genuine depth to them"
"I was drawn into this family's struggle to survive on a world all but destroyed by corporate greed."

This standalone short story delivers a complete, emotionally resonant experience perfect for a single sitting—but its impact will linger long after you finish.

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