Chapter 12 Broken Bone
Broken Bone
Last night when the wind was heavy, I couldn’t even doze off if I had wanted to.
The whole building was rattling so hard against the unrelenting gale and for small moments I could pretend it was almost soothing rock, but in reality it had been more of a taunting shake than anything else.
This morning in the too bright early light, cold and stark, through my blinking unadjusted squint I see that Lir is working on weaving something.
He still doesn’t move his shoulder in quite the right way and I can tell he probably used to be able to do this in a much more fluid motion.
He looks frustrated at the project, annoyed at the way his arm doesn’t move along with his hands.
He stops to strip some more silvery pieces from a kelp frond that he spins around his fingertip to add to his thread reserve.
Continuously, he loops the thread around dried stretches of the lustrous seagrass that I brought him as requested from the shore.
A rough basket shape is beginning to form.
When I ask Lir about its deflated appearance his brows furrow. “When I used to make these there wasn’t so much gravity pulling them down underwater.”
“Ah, that makes sense. It must be difficult for you to have to live like the rest of us,” I laugh.
“The rest of your people live trapped in a ten-by-ten foot pool?” I can sense his sarcasm, but before I can retort I hear a strange squawking coming from behind a nearby stack of rocks.
“Please, no more weird noises!” I say as I clamber away to investigate.
Creeping my head over the rocks, I lean over the jagged miniature cliff. Armed with a short stick, I poke the small gray fuzz frantically making the inconsistent peeping. A baby bird with barely open eyes and covered in a more hair like substance than feathers looks up at my shadow cast over it.
Smiling back at Lir, I shout, “Not another merman! Nothing to worry about!” He first scoffs in reaction, but pulls himself out of the pool a little more and squints to watch us.
While being mindful of the wing that is clearly crooked in an unnatural direction, I scoop up the strange little thing.
It reminds me of Lir’s dislocated joint when I first found him.
The little nestling is ugly but also adorable.
Though the wing resembles Lir’s, I in turn resemble its misshapen fuzz ball appearance.
A strange thought makes small tears well up in the corners of my eyes, like some sort of feeling that I had long cried away still had one last little weep in me. .
The small bird does not shriek nor protest. It’s a sign the fledgling is truly injured, as I think the other gulls would’ve pecked me given the chance.
The over circling gulls are surprisingly silent today, perhaps because of their little lost one here.
I tuck it under my double-breasted coat, I wish it was shearling lined instead of just stiff cotton, but my chest should provide some safety and warmth.
With the gull hidden away, I trot over to Lir.
Inquisitively, he lifts his head from his project.
I go to get down on one knee but get the sudden funny feeling that I am about to ask him some important question while I reach into my jacket for the oddest loud and fluffy ring box.
Instead, I plead with him, only half-sarcastically, “Please don't eat him…”
“I thought you knew me better by now! Or at least you would know that it it not my goal to consume everything in sight.”
I squint at him, then over at the little pool I had thrown the octopus into a few days ago. He rolls his eyes before whispering, “Touché.”
He hums peacefully as he takes the bristly cotton ball from my hands.
He immediately coos to it, making noises between a dove and a whale.
The little bird lifts its head with a tiny peep and nuzzles into his warm hands.
I’ve never been jealous of a damn bird, but it looks so cozy being able to be fully engulfed in his palm.
Lir takes some of his weaving and a small twig to form them into a splint around the wing.
He lifts up part of his pectoral wrapping and tucks the bird within so that it can be close to his warm skin.
“Jealous, little bird?” He looks up at me watching him closely, my hands following his as if I'm ready to catch the tiny thing.
“Yes.”
A long silence stretches between the—now, three of us. A silence that is warm, alluring and confirming like I’ve finally spoken some great truth, some feeling that until this moment I had been too afraid to admit.
“It should feel better in a few days, young things heal fast. Unlike me.” He reaches down to rub his stitches that are still a dark umber of crusted blood in some places.
Really for the injuries he had endured, they are healing quite well.
If I had been slammed against those rocks like Lir, or out in the ocean like when Eli fell into the sea—well, there would have been nothing left.
That night when we eat, I make a little rice mackerel porridge.
He dips his webbed hand in to let the mixture drip off his short claw into the birds mouth, it is so maternal and intimate at the same time.
“It will heal soon. You will live, little one.” He smiles down at the peeping floof of feathers and he is healing something in my heart too.
“Do you like the gulls, Lir?”
“Eh, I don’t think there’s any living thing I dislike. Well, except the occasional human. There’s really some bad seeds among you. Most animals don’t kill for pleasure like yours does.”
“Yeah, I guess we have some real sickos and perverts, huh?” I lean back against the rocks my arms crossed behind my head.
“Pervert?”
I spit out my drink a little just hearing him saying the word, but then drink another sip of tea. “Yeah, like when you licked my fingers. You know, sex fiends.”
“Well, I didn’t have sex on my mind at all when I did that. So maybe you’re the uh—pervert, Andrea.”
Involuntarily, as crimson as the now slowly lowering sun, I blush red all over.
That rosy light bounces around within Lir’s eyes and the words hang in the air between us.
Of course he hasn’t been thinking about sex, it’s been just me this whole time.
The uptight lady who’s been stuck on a goddamn rock in the middle of the ocean for three years is pushing all these thoughts onto this half-fish-man for my own lecherous narrative.
I get up to go, quickly turning away from him to head over the door. I gasp, wrenching myself from my twisting thoughts…and twisted internal ramblings, “It’s time for my shift—”
He reaches up grasping my hand, so delicately. The velvet soft webbing catching my fingers like spiderwebs in the wind, his warm hand tracing each individual line in my much smaller palm. “Would you like me to?” He says softly.
I can’t focus on his words though, when his glittering eyes are looking up at me, the green flash of the final moment of daylight staying a little longer in his corneas—a slow camera bulb burning out.
“Like you to what?” I ask confused.
“Have those thoughts when I touch your hands?”
For a moment I can’t speak, but then all of my words catch up to me in the wrong order and too quickly, “I have light, to go light—“ Pulling away from him, my hand thumps from his warmth and I hold my breath until I reach the front door frame.
Just as I am going to close the oak door behind me, I hear Lir laughing, “Your foster mother is a strange one, little bird.”
This makes me rush back towards him, for just one more moment, one more interlude with Lir. I cannot live with letting him have the last word, I absolutely refuse! Especially on who, between the two of us, is more of an oddity.
His lips almost brush against mine, the distance being imperceptible, except to angels, to the stars that watch from Heaven and can witness even the most microscopic flutterings of tenderness.
His eyes dart back and forth attempting to read me.
In this moment, that he witnesses me as strange, as odd, but still finds me fascinating—it sends a shiver through my whole being.
As I observe him just as closely, we are equals in this reciprocal exchange.
I can’t help but smile as I tilt my head in synchronized motion with his. “How strange you are as well, Lir.”