Stone spring

TWO
28

All across the northern hemisphere tremendous masses were on the move, as ice melted and water flowed. Under this pressure the seabeds suffered their own spasms of compression and release. Huge subsurface salt deposits, relics of previous eras of drying, shifted and cracked – weak points in the rocky substructure, their failure causing uplift and fracturing on the surface.

Far to the north of Etxelur the seabed was particularly unstable. As the ice had receded over Scandinavia, rivers swollen by meltwater had eroded away whole landscapes and deposited the debris in the shallow ocean – the ruins of mountains and valleys dumped in fans and scree slopes and undersea dunes. This gigantic spill was never in equilibrium; it had been deposited too quickly for that.

Huge volumes of mud slid and settled in the deep dark. Strange weather systems gathered over the restless seabed, ocean storms whose rumbling thunder could be heard far away.

Given enough time, a more significant adjustment was inevitable.