Atlas Kotze | D4 | cb fin

The last of a dying breed was the title he was given. A living survivor of the last few people who knew the art of balancing on wood as waves take him ashore. The one thing that made him feel free when nothing else could. Just him and the waves that lap along the sand at the edge. Drifting along in the water where he felt at home when home was no longer a place of safety. Parents that fling words of fire back and forth with red in their eyes. Forcing their son to become a career of all things to prove that he was strong enough to be a Kotze, even if his father and mother didn't think so. An only child who preferred the comfort of the ocean, drifting along like driftwood belonging nowhere and everywhere.

There's sweat on his forehead when he comes from the ocean to the sand with a squishing sound of wet feet and sunbathed sand. Feet take him to the main square of the district, surfboard in hand, close to his heart where the dying art lives. People pass by him without a second look at him like it was the most obvious thing in the world to have with him. Questions from children rise in the air, but he doesn't explain, only gives them a small smile. The people were drab with emotions so gray that the district doesn't look like the ocean that laps at the edge of the district. All he could think of was wishing to be back at the ocean blue where it meets land.

Fighting parents, forceful careers, and a dying art.

All of it could be fixed with just the blue of the ocean.

At least, that's what he keeps telling himself.