Chapter 8 Feast
Feast
In the late morning, I slowly peek out my window.
Thinking again that this is all some sort of mirage and that I’ve been alone on this rock for far too long—but he’s still here.
I try to go about my daily tasks, but it’s a little distracting with a so-called mythical creature at my front doorstep.
I run back and forth nervously around the outside of the lighthouse, picking up debris from the storm, making some small repairs here and there.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” His low calm voice travels easily beneath the muffling fog.
“Ow!” His question distracted me from nailing back down a board on the shed and I cry out as the hammer misses its intended target.
Instead, it lands directly on my thumbnail which now pulsates and bleeds in pain.
I try to bury it in my shirt, pressurizing it so the blood doesn’t go everywhere.
I look around in a little bit of a panic but Lir beckons me towards him. “Come.” He smoothly requests.
I oblige. He takes my hand, and then once again to my surprise, the injury up to his mouth but stops just before his lips.
“Can I?” He whispers. Not breaking eye contact with me, not even looking at the injury.
I want to pull away, but he holds tight onto my wrist waiting for my answer.
I have to give him one, and the only one I can muster is the silent vertical motion of my head.
He sucks away the pain, and when I do free my hand from his wet grasp it looks as if the mishap never happened.
“That was my fault for distracting you.” He looks up, searching for forgiveness. “I’m sorry. Is it feeling better now?”
Freeing my hand back into my own possession, I admire his work.
Even my nail bed looks more pink and healthy than it had in years.
Working out here in all the salt, my hands have grown rough and dull, but the skin he mouthed is now fresh and new.
I kneel next to him in his tide pool, lost in thought about this fantastical miracle just performed on me.
My eyes graze over my captive sorcerer, over his warm skin, his richly dark hair, and the little glimmerings of golden hoops that adorn his stupidly beautiful face.
Those frivolous rings could buy a barrel of wine, a whole round of some really good cheese.
Hm, my stomach growls. I blush in embarrassment.
I’ve been running around so frantically that I haven’t noticed my growing hunger.
I suppose stomach growling is a universal phenomena because Lir understands and quickly dives down to the bottom of this little pool.
It’s fairly shallow so his tail flaps up in the air above the surface.
Up with him he brings two bright blue and green speckled crabs.
Their large pinchers reach out at me suddenly which makes me fall backwards surprised.
“Ah!” We both laugh at my little yip.
“Will these help? I’m pretty hungry too,” he admits.
Lir sets one down and is about to chomp into his while it still flails around when I stop him. “We have to cook these!”
He slowly closes his mouth confused. “Uh, really? I’ve never eaten them like that.” The crab still thrashes around in his hands, happy to have a little more time to fight for its life.
“Just because it’s not how you do something, doesn’t mean your way is the best!” I say, but he squints his eyes unconvinced.
Rubbing the bridge of my nose so hard I can see those green splotchy crabs behind my eyelids. “But, I guess that makes sense—there aren’t kitchens at the bottom of the ocean after all.” I hand him back the crab meant for me which is trying to escape into another pool. “Here, humor me. One second!”
Ignoring my heavy legs, I run back inside for a gas camping stove, a large pot and a bundle of kitchen supplies from upstairs.
Passing by a window in the hall I look down at Lir, waiting on the edge of the pool with anticipation for my return.
I hum happily as I shift the kitchen tools in my arms and tucked under my elbow, but almost fumble them down the stairs as something catches the corner of my eye.
A small coruscating flash, that like bitter citrus, sucks all the moisture out of my mouth. There it is out there again!
My gaze pans back down to Lir, if he’s here—what is that still glinting just beyond the northwest horizon, in the direction of open arctic ocean.
Lost in thought, I carefully walk back down the steps with my arms full and try to not look shaken by that light that has already disappeared again.
Lir’s bright smile instantly wipes my brain of fear, of concern for anything outside of the demonstration I am setting up for him.
But, the thought of that light still tickles the back of my head, a little zap lingering in the space just between my brain stem and spine.
Another anxiety piled on all the rest that swirl around in that liminal gap.
My hands shake a bit, but I am awoken by Lir’s quiet wonderment.
“Incredible.” Lir watches in amazement as the little fire instantly starts up with the turn of a few knobs.
In the beaten up copper pot, I slowly bring the water to a boil and add some of my precious seasonings to the water as the crabs turn to a bright mahogany red. Lir acts like it’s all a magic trick, but he does seem a little concerned about the dried leaves I added to the water.
“You’re gonna love it! I promise.” I reassure him.
Just as the crabs finish cooking, I run upstairs one more time to grab some plates.
It’s surprising this place even has more than one.
I don’t know the last time I set a table for two.
It’s nice and makes it feel a little closer to being some sort of home.
I crack open a leg and we both begin, Lir devouring his down easily and expertly.
While he delights in all the new flavors, I delight in his enjoyment.
This feels closer to humanity than I’ve felt in a long time, even though I’m sitting across from someone who only vaguely resembles me.
To share a meal like this makes me want to cry a little. It has been so long.
“I was so lonely.”
It escapes my lips before I can reel it back again. His crunching on the shell stops. I laugh a little to hide my bubbling emotions and then violently rip off a claw with my teeth. A jester like act to distract from the truth I revealed.
“So, what are you even doing here?” The words fall out of my mouth along with a sizable portion of crab.
Lir looks pensive, as if he hasn’t thought about that himself. ”Hm, that is a good question. In some ways, I guess I don’t know. I started having these dreams—” I stop chewing, I stop breathing, and I can’t swallow fast enough to ask him more questions.
He moves on too quickly though. “The ocean brought me here. Isn’t that enough?
” He says as his whole body and tail slumps into the water.
For a moment, he then looks almost ashamed, a surprise since I thought this creature had none.
“Also, I got too close and slammed into those rocks. Some strange sound came through the water.” He swishes his hands in the air in concentric motions.
“It was so loud that it completely disoriented me. For a second I couldn’t tell which way I was headed.
I’ve never had that happen to me before in my life, and then—” Bam!
He slaps his webbed hands on the rocks. “So I’m here because I’m a—as you would say, an idiot.
” His raised eyebrows and half smile scream, are you happy now?
“That makes two of us!” I laugh, “I’m an idiot for coming out here, and for running out there that night.” I look into his eyes, deep pools and caverns twisting within them, miles of kelp washed along a distant shore. “Well, maybe not so stupid, but maybe just too wishful. Too much of a damn sap!”
“Why is that?”
“Because, I thought I was saving my husband.”
He looks surprised. “He was out there in those waves?” His torso juts out of the water in panic as his neck jerks out towards the sea.
“No, Lir—not recently.” I shake my head somberly. “He died a long time ago now. I think I was lost in a dream that I was saving my husband when I ran out there that night.”
“Ah. Well, I am still grateful. And, who knows, maybe you were in some way—” He smirks as I tilt my head confused.
“You did say that you had considered finding another one.” He almost sings as he says it through that pompous grin.
My face turns bright red as my mouth falls open from his boldness.
Tilting his head he clarifies, “A husband, that’s like a mate, yes? ”
Surprised, I pull back, but he leans in closer.
The light catching his teeth as his lips pull up at the edge.
“Ah, don’t worry human. I’m just teasing you.
People and mermaids don’t go around mating.
” I’m glad I already swallowed my food, because otherwise I would have choked.
The glare in his eyes swells up, his pupils growing so large I could fall within them.
“They are hunters and hunted, back and forth—over and over, encircling the world a thousand times doing such things—but not being what I think humans call husbands. Not being mates with each other.”
I catch my breath. “Yeah, yes. I suppose then.” I say, gulping through my bite of food.
“For you creatures—” I cough correcting myself, “For your people, is that your equivalent? Mates as what you would call lovers?” I guess I can’t perfectly translate social equivalencies for societies that I just learned existed.
“Love-ers.” He pauses on the word, but shakes his head and vibrates it off physically as little droplets of water go flying around his fins. He shrugs. “Hm, perhaps.” I wonder if it is also impossible for mermaids to give straight answers.
He crinkles his eyebrows together and looks like he’s thinking hard, trying to remember something from long ago.
But then, shrugs it all off, as if it is all just a trivial matter.
“I don't know much about it. I was born alone and have been mostly alone since. I’ve surmounted that we’re mostly solitary ‘creatures’, as you call us. ”
“So, you’ve been all alone these—“ I look him up and down and throw out a guess because I've been curious anyways. He doesn’t seem to be much older than I am. Maybe even about the same age. “Thirty—no, thirty-five years?”
“Much, much longer than that, Andrea.”
“Well, it makes my three years alone sound like nothing.”
“It’s all relative to your lifespan. Some organisms only live for a few days, so a few hours would feel like a lifetime of solitude, and I wouldn’t wish that on a single amoeba.”
His words of loneliness reach down into that deep part of me that I had convinced myself no one else understood.
Tonight, I dream of him again. It must be from all the seafood in my stomach, but I imagine I’m lying awake on the ocean floor.
The world peacefully passing by above me.
The light is refracted by the waves into a soft quilt over the sand.
Then there’s Lir beside me, smiling gently at the cerulean peacefulness around us.
I sleep better than I have in years, drifting away in this cozy dream.