Status: Re-uploaded 20/09/12.
The Sea Breathes
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The sea is speechless as I crack the door, taking a wet towel to wrap around her bedraggled shoulders. I lead her down the path, where each cobblestone shines in the rain like a freshly shelled mussel. It is cosy weather– nobody watches us.
We stumble to the jagged cliffs, and down the slippery incline. Rocks stick up like the broken teeth as the sea gnashes, but she does not snap at me. She is too weak; too fragile. The gale and the spray whip her shrivelled hair, caressing and resuscitating it. We balance on long legs, straddling boulders along the headland, until we reach the point where the earth juts into the deep.
The sea stands, skirts frothing, and faces herself. I hand her the comb from my pocket. Its adornments have faded, but its pearl still glows like a dim eye. I watch her run it trembling through her locks, pulling her voice free. She speaks in a garbled language, like a thirsty man stumbling out of the desert. She gurgles and hisses, like a jet of water exploring slim gaps and chasms.
Her state is intense, like the chipped onyx of the waves in winter, through which no light refracts. She is angry.
Then, the sea breaks. She skips over the rocks and leaps at the ocean-beast, scattering like foam. A puff of mist hangs where she has been. A fluke rises, brilliant and panelled like dragonfly wings, finely ribbed for combing all the rainbows from the water. It is a fabulous disappearing act. Her tail winks once in the grey light, and is gone.
I am alone on the beach, a speck on the thin fingernail of coastline sandwiched between fathoms of sea and sky. Dark clouds churn overhead, curdling with thunder, and sculpted by fire like congealing lava. Shafts of light lance down triumphantly, spearing the sea, trident-like, and staining the sharp peaks and troughs with bled gold.
The thunder bellows once more, and I think that the sky will crumble, toppling down to crush the land as wind and waves convene. I hurry home.
Inside my cottage, it is dry. The shelves that gather dust are a museum for stolen objects –pale imitations of the sea, with none of her life and vigour. The urchins are parched balls, lacking spikes and deep, rich reds and indescribable purples. The shells are huge on their tiny shelves, displaced from the massive continental shelf, where they were once surrounded by towering chains of kelp and dappled skies with darting fish and manta rays like phantoms cleaving the abyss.
I am in an airy world, where even my clouded coffee is a fragment of the ocean from whence all liquid comes.
I breathe.
We stumble to the jagged cliffs, and down the slippery incline. Rocks stick up like the broken teeth as the sea gnashes, but she does not snap at me. She is too weak; too fragile. The gale and the spray whip her shrivelled hair, caressing and resuscitating it. We balance on long legs, straddling boulders along the headland, until we reach the point where the earth juts into the deep.
The sea stands, skirts frothing, and faces herself. I hand her the comb from my pocket. Its adornments have faded, but its pearl still glows like a dim eye. I watch her run it trembling through her locks, pulling her voice free. She speaks in a garbled language, like a thirsty man stumbling out of the desert. She gurgles and hisses, like a jet of water exploring slim gaps and chasms.
Her state is intense, like the chipped onyx of the waves in winter, through which no light refracts. She is angry.
Then, the sea breaks. She skips over the rocks and leaps at the ocean-beast, scattering like foam. A puff of mist hangs where she has been. A fluke rises, brilliant and panelled like dragonfly wings, finely ribbed for combing all the rainbows from the water. It is a fabulous disappearing act. Her tail winks once in the grey light, and is gone.
I am alone on the beach, a speck on the thin fingernail of coastline sandwiched between fathoms of sea and sky. Dark clouds churn overhead, curdling with thunder, and sculpted by fire like congealing lava. Shafts of light lance down triumphantly, spearing the sea, trident-like, and staining the sharp peaks and troughs with bled gold.
The thunder bellows once more, and I think that the sky will crumble, toppling down to crush the land as wind and waves convene. I hurry home.
Inside my cottage, it is dry. The shelves that gather dust are a museum for stolen objects –pale imitations of the sea, with none of her life and vigour. The urchins are parched balls, lacking spikes and deep, rich reds and indescribable purples. The shells are huge on their tiny shelves, displaced from the massive continental shelf, where they were once surrounded by towering chains of kelp and dappled skies with darting fish and manta rays like phantoms cleaving the abyss.
I am in an airy world, where even my clouded coffee is a fragment of the ocean from whence all liquid comes.
I breathe.