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Mar. 2nd, 2005
Change is something to be sought, not avoided.
Problem with that, of course, is not all change is good, and change for its own sake is frequently a mistake.
So when I was sitting on the beach, first watching the sun come up, and then watching the explosions of water like prisms and the brilliant trails of refracted rainbow light, followed by roiling fire and preceded by knifelike silver fingers into the sky--
Well.
I wished the sea people all the best, and hoped they'd find what they were looking for.
--
"You're a mermaid, love, you haven't anything to pack," I said tiredly, sitting forward a bit on the rock I'd adopted as my own. Watching her flutter about gracefully, every movement like weightless dancing, all I could think of was what I'd be losing. I don't often fixate on myself, but she--
She was so oblivious.
"Don't be such a cloud of ink, Evans," scolded the girl, glaring at me over her glittering shoulder, green hair aloft around her. "If I'm going to pack, I'm going to pack, and you and your cranky logic can't do anything about it!"
My logic. As if it were peculiar to me, as if it were a unique ailment.
"Koa," I said, voice falling flat. "I don't intend to do anything about it. I'm not about to stop you, any of you, from leaving. It's what you all want. But you can't expect me to be happy about it, and you certainly can't expect me to go blithely along with it and fail to question your judgement on it every step of the way."
Stretching out on my underwater rock, I leaned back and eyed the fish-girl sideways, moody and bleak. My gaze dropped to my toes, wiggling and unwebbed, unaffected by the cold or the wet. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes, focusing on listening. Clacks, cries, calls - sounds from miles off, echoing and cool, felt as much as heard.
And in the middle of it, a touch, light and gentle on the side of my face. I opened my eyes and met Koa's, bright green and practically glowing with empathy.
"I'd stay, love, but the living move on. I'll come back for you when it's my turn," she said, voice struggling not to catch, other hand coming up so her cool webbed fingers held both sides of my face. And then her kiss, tasting of salt and air and water, of rain and wind, of the smoke from a burning ship, of the sun on the waves and the sleepy despair of a drowning man--
--and I didn't see anything else.
--
I woke up just before sunrise, laid out on the beach like I'd only fallen asleep there, watching the stars.
Still in the clothes I'd drowned in, so many years ago; out of fashion for decades, at least, but whole and hale as I apparently was.
I'd never stopped breathing, but now it meant something.
And the sun came up and sent the stars away, and the surface of the glimmering ocean was broken by a hundred hundred glass and silver knives, throwing light everywhere, slicing the dawn sky and setting it on fire.
Problem with that, of course, is not all change is good, and change for its own sake is frequently a mistake.
So when I was sitting on the beach, first watching the sun come up, and then watching the explosions of water like prisms and the brilliant trails of refracted rainbow light, followed by roiling fire and preceded by knifelike silver fingers into the sky--
Well.
I wished the sea people all the best, and hoped they'd find what they were looking for.
--
"You're a mermaid, love, you haven't anything to pack," I said tiredly, sitting forward a bit on the rock I'd adopted as my own. Watching her flutter about gracefully, every movement like weightless dancing, all I could think of was what I'd be losing. I don't often fixate on myself, but she--
She was so oblivious.
"Don't be such a cloud of ink, Evans," scolded the girl, glaring at me over her glittering shoulder, green hair aloft around her. "If I'm going to pack, I'm going to pack, and you and your cranky logic can't do anything about it!"
My logic. As if it were peculiar to me, as if it were a unique ailment.
"Koa," I said, voice falling flat. "I don't intend to do anything about it. I'm not about to stop you, any of you, from leaving. It's what you all want. But you can't expect me to be happy about it, and you certainly can't expect me to go blithely along with it and fail to question your judgement on it every step of the way."
Stretching out on my underwater rock, I leaned back and eyed the fish-girl sideways, moody and bleak. My gaze dropped to my toes, wiggling and unwebbed, unaffected by the cold or the wet. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes, focusing on listening. Clacks, cries, calls - sounds from miles off, echoing and cool, felt as much as heard.
And in the middle of it, a touch, light and gentle on the side of my face. I opened my eyes and met Koa's, bright green and practically glowing with empathy.
"I'd stay, love, but the living move on. I'll come back for you when it's my turn," she said, voice struggling not to catch, other hand coming up so her cool webbed fingers held both sides of my face. And then her kiss, tasting of salt and air and water, of rain and wind, of the smoke from a burning ship, of the sun on the waves and the sleepy despair of a drowning man--
--and I didn't see anything else.
--
I woke up just before sunrise, laid out on the beach like I'd only fallen asleep there, watching the stars.
Still in the clothes I'd drowned in, so many years ago; out of fashion for decades, at least, but whole and hale as I apparently was.
I'd never stopped breathing, but now it meant something.
And the sun came up and sent the stars away, and the surface of the glimmering ocean was broken by a hundred hundred glass and silver knives, throwing light everywhere, slicing the dawn sky and setting it on fire.