Chapter 7 Lir’s Bubble
Lir’s Bubble
Lir
The gray clouds billow out across the sea, silver stripes stippling the curve of the waves, a sharpened quill etching the lines from a metal embossed plate.
I could pick out each crest and quell of those undulating swells as my friends, my family.
Each with a voice that calls me back to them, which beckons me to attempt the arduous crawl across the rocks once again.
Instead of reattempting that painful marathon, I settle back against the edge of the tide pool.
With my arms up on the lip and my head back, I exhale into the foggy morning air, my breath rises above me like the curving whip of my tail.
The front door of the human’s tower creaks open, she looks around surveying the landscape.
She tip-toes across the rocks, hugging against the side of the stone structure—as if she could even creep past me.
I raise my eyebrow, as if I’m some sort of creature to creep past!
I huff in displeasure and steam exhales in two distinct clouds from my nostrils.
I’ve been trying to look less threatening to her, but if she wishes to skulk around as if a sea dragon is outside, I will not shy away from that inherent part of myself.
For a moment I think I’ll puff up and give her a little scare, just to prove that I am indeed a nightmare to be weary of. To make sure this human knows that even injured, I will not be caught, captured, hooked or harpooned.
But, as she comes slowly closer in her zig-zag gait, I settle back down.
Quietly, I lean back again as she paces.
The human is attempting but failing to be inconspicuous as her steps undulate in distance from the tide pool.
I don’t think she can decide if she wants to come closer, or not.
I lower my flared fins, tucking them obediently back under the water.
For some reason, I don’t even want to playfully frighten her.
Ignoring me still, she leans back against a rock as well and begins pretending to sleep. I know she’s pretending because she periodically opens and closes one eye to peer at me. I wonder if she is as desperate to speak to me, as I to her. As curiously fascinated by this whole ordeal.
The low mist ribbons between us and I wish I could use it as a rope to pull her towards me. She yawns and I can’t take this silent stand off anymore.
“Hello human, care to join us in the realm of the awake?”
In over exaggerated motions, she comically stretches, trying to play up that act of hers.
Already, lying is proving to not be one of her strong suits.
She seems to be strong—yes, after all she did pull me out of the waves, and then back and forth across this rock multiple times.
But, these shuffling she preforms now aren’t the rituals of some skilled hunter and I relax a little as I watch her closely.
She yawns while extending her arms above her head, even that simple gesture draws me closer to her in some charming way.
She blinks at me and settles back against the rock with her arms crossed.
Dammit. I think she is about to speak, but her eyes close again and she rests her ears back on her hunched shoulders.
Nothing? Ugh, she’s just going back to fake napping I suppose—
Frustrated, I dip under the surface of the water, I can’t just watch her anymore.
So desperate, for, something! Ah, I want to tear out my hair and scales, and throw them at her.
I wish—well, she’s supposed to want me to be interwoven between that hair, between her dreams. Given that, I am a siren— usually that means, humans are hunting for me.
Desperate for a glimpse of me even, but this woman—just look at me human, and not just in one calculating glance at a time!
Suddenly, tiny bubbles splash in every direction on the surface of the pool, vigorously dividing in explosive blooms all around the intruding form.
Her incoming pale face, her cheeks puffed out, and her eyes bright and wide with glimmering wonder look straight at me.
A few tiny fish swim past her distorted grin and she squints to focus on me through the wafting kelp in the dark pool.
She is peering through the looking-glass into a microcosm of my world.
She says something and the bubbles of air blip out of her mouth, but I can’t understand what she says underwater.
Her voice is too monotone, it doesn’t travel like whale song.
Through the light that scatters all about the air bubbles and rocks, I reach up grasping towards her face which peers through the salt water.
As if the moon has actually set below the ocean’s surface, she descends down upon me.
Before I can touch her, she pulls back and up out of the water.
Of course she wouldn’t want my monstrous hand to touch her, I tighten my claws into my fist in a futile attempt to hide them from her.
I should have sanded them on the coarse rocks last night, then maybe she—
Following her out of the water, I peek up to apologize for—well, being me, but her gasping breaths don’t give way to fear.
No, a hint of laughter shakes between her lips.
Kneeling next to the pool that she had just stuck her head down into, her voice fills with her sharp inhales for air.
Then she finally speaks to me, “My name is—Andrea.”
“Andrea.” The word moves easily around my mouth, not like most human words. Instead, I find it lingers on my tongue a little longer as I whisper it back to her. She watches carefully, reaching out as if something precious will physically fall from my lips from reciting the incantation of her name.
The shape of the word feels familiar, like I’ve heard it in the wind, or in the whisper of a hollow empty shell. It sends an electrified buzz across the roof of my mouth as I sigh out the last vowel, as if I’ve felt it carried across lightning as it displaces the air.
The silence is broken when she laughs while shaking her wet hair like a sea lion. The abrupt sprinkling droplets break the spell that she has put me under from just saying one word.
“I had wished when I was younger, for a prettier, softer name.” She clasps her hands and blinks her lashes quickly, in some sort of caricature of what I assume to be a young girl.
“But really, it’s the perfect name for me out on this rock now.
They say it means manly, I guess? What kind of jerk gives that kind of name to a little girl? ”
She flips her wet hair back over her head, and continues before I can answer.
Now that she has opened her mouth, she doesn’t let me get a word in edgewise.
“You know, I used to not have a rat’s nest for hair.
Despite my name I was quite a refined, educated and beautiful young lady.
That is until I married a sailor and threw it all away.
So, I suppose I grew into it.” She laughs a little under her breath.
“I don’t know why I’m even telling you all of this—”
“More beautiful?” I reply in a raspy whisper to myself. I find it hard to imagine as her linen top becomes more sheer from the water dripping from her hair, as her eyes glitter with my tail in their reflection.
She ignores me other than turning a tantalizing shade of coral pink as she wraps a wet strand of her hair around her finger.
“I was…before I came out here, which seems like a lifetime ago.” Her full lips have turned a bright red from the icy water, along with her ears, cheeks and nose.
“There must be something about the sea that naturally dishevels people, turns them wild. That has turned me so crazy as to think—” Looking at me, her mouth pauses before any other incriminating words can leave her lips and she seals herself back up tight once again.
“The sea itself tells no lies, it is the absolute truth of everything. It knows all secrets that have been passed through flesh, through land and into the water,” I think for a moment about how she couldn’t even pretend to sleep.
For someone to be so laughably bad at deception, her secrets must not be too difficult for the sea to pry open.
“You would have had to been wild to begin with to have such kinship with the sea.”
Her cheeks grow even more red, like squid suckers have pulled all her shame to the surface of her skin.
“I am no such thing!” She exclaims, but looks down to rub her knuckles.
“No, not wild. But, a desperate need to be uncaged. To not be stuck under my mother-in-law, or another husband—as I had considered that option too.” For some reason that statement makes my good arm’s claws grip the side of the rock pool, but I relax again and continue listening.
Looking over at the seagulls that fight amongst themselves for some ocean meat scrap she ponders, “Hm, wild—wild feels like I would stop at nothing to disappear, to rip off heads and gnaw off my own limbs to escape into the woods.”
Shrugging, I think about how that is not too far off from how I have lived my own life thus far.
She looks up at me with a sorrowful smile, which is almost worse than a frown.
A horrible acceptance in her eyes that were just sparkling a moment before.
“I think I’d be happy as a stray cat, taking scraps, just so long as I wouldn’t be locked inside.
A fringe creature who is happy in the alley between the walls of places society finds acceptable for me to live within. ”
“Your world shouldn’t be scraps or seconds—” I want to tell her it should be everything, it should be how I have lived.
For a moment I have the strangest thought, that it should be with—I look down at my crooked arm and my sliced body.
Maybe, I’m just scraps now too. Since so obviously, the sea has turned against me as to maroon me on this rock.
Andrea leans closer to me, her dark hair springing up again as it dries. “The world should be a lot of things, Lir.” Her mouth turns up at the corners. “Well, I suppose those are all out the window, those preconceived notions I had before pulling a mythical creature—I mean, a merman from the sea.”
She smiles and magnetically I am pulled to run the very edges of the top sides of my fingers under her arm, which supports herself over the pool.
That soft skin which bares itself to me just below her bicep, so comforting and warm.
She shivers from the contact, but doesn’t pull away.
For a man who has had everything, suddenly I feel perfectly content with this patch of skin, for this moment I would be completely satisfied for the rest of my long life.
The morning air is crisp in my lungs, and the song that carries through the sound of the ocean more clear, as if it is flowing directly through me even in this small puddle. Everything feels sharply in focus, even as I lose myself in the repetitive swirling motion of my hand against her skin.
I have swam across the waves of monotonous time—but, it’s like I have just now awoken, like today could actually be the first day of my life.
Reality comes rushing back towards me and up over my body when the loud cry of seagulls cuts through the silence between us.
Quickly, I pull my claws back towards me.
Not knowing what entranced me to—what pulled me towards her to get so lost in those thoughts.
She sits there also frozen at the edge of the water.
Her mouth parts to say something, but before she can I back away to the furthest edge from her.
I dip below to things I understand—to cold familiar darkness beneath the surface.