We skimmed the gray, choppy waves until we were sure we couldn't be seen from the beach. The light was fading. The sun was going down.

The ocean is always intimidating. But when the sun sets and darkness rolls across the waves, you just can't help but be awed and abashed and a little frightened of it.

Millions and millions of cubic miles of water. Twenty miles deep in places. Stretching all around the planet, touching every continent, most nations. Home to tens of millions of species, everything from the submicroscopic to the immense.

You feel small beside a whale. Insignificant. Then you realize that a whale is insignificant in the ocean.

And then you're flying over the bare fringe of that ocean, flying over a mystery that puny Homo sapiens may never fully understand.

And you feel your own smallness, your own utter weakness, and it's like a lead weight on your chest.

It's not that the ocean is an enemy. It simply doesn't care. It feeds you, it makes the oxygen you breathe, it gave birth to your species, and, if you get careless, it kills you. All without the slightest personal interest.

There's nothing you can say to the ocean. No mercy to be begged. No deals to be made. If we were weak or careless or stupid, it would smother us, crush us, bury us forever in miles of black, black water.

Animorphs 27. The Exposed by K. A. Applegate