Chapter 20 Candlelit
Candlelit
Little Bird isn’t the only one feeling stronger.
The wounds along Lir’s torso and tail have all but disappeared into shiny smooth scars.
We decide it’s time to start working on his route back to the ocean.
Every day we grind away together on pushing, pulling, scooping and digging away rocks to make a path to the sea.
Every day that we get closer to the water’s edge, my heart grows heavier.
Like I said, after all, he’s not a goldfish.
Though I do enjoy tapping on the proverbial glass to tease him.
I find us laughing more than digging while we work.
The days go by quickly, as we find excuses to take another sandwich break, to splash around in a pool, to cool off and just sit quietly watching the sea.
I’ve started to not find the gulls so annoying, more like they’re laughing along with us.
I’ve even brought out cards we’ve played by candlelight during a smooth windless dusk.
“You won again Lir!” I groan annoyed yet proud. “You have learned from the best, so it was only bound to happen.” I fall backwards to look up at the stars glistening like sequins stitched into the night sky.
Little Bird peeps happily in response as well. Her fever broke yesterday and seems mostly recovered. Well, especially after much babying from Lir.
“Andrea.” A velvety whisper reaches out to me through the dark.
“Yes?” I turn my head to look at his eyes glimmering in the candlelight, his tail looping over his head, creating a saint like nimbus reflecting all the warmth in every direction.
“Thank you for pulling me out of those rocks that day.”
Without even thinking, I roll forward and kiss him. “Thank you for being so helpless,“ I laugh. He looks at me confused and shocked, I quickly recoil. “Oh God! I’m so embarrassed, I—“
He cuts me off, grabbing my face, his eyes darting back and forth. “Are you hurt somewhere? Tell me where it hurts Andrea and I’ll heal it!”
Now I’m confused too, but after a few seconds of us blankly looking at each other realize his misunderstanding. “Oh Lir…I’m not hurt.”
“I thought you couldn’t stand my mouth.” His hand comes up to graze against his lips.
“I can’t stand how much I want it, how—” I watch the arch at the bow of his lips, whenever he smiles that curve launches an arrow into my chest. God, he’s doing it right now. I try and explain to him, “Humans do that, when they—um, like someone. Yeah.” I nod frantically. “Just because I like you.”
“Like you liked your husband, Eli?”
“No, that’s different, I think…Oh, man. I keep telling myself this, wrestling with this…Eli was my husband, a man…and you’re—”
“I’m just a fish.” His eyes grow narrow as he sharply inhales.
Hiding in my shoulder, He presses his face into my neck.
Inhaling so deeply I think I will be absorbed into him.
With subdued intensity, his voice shakes.
“You know, with my song—“ He whispers so low that his words melt into my skin, his voice taking up residence between my goosebumps.
“I could make you forget—even him. I could make you claw desperately for me, froth at the mouth for me—” Pulling me closer, I shake in his hands, mirroring his muffled trembling.
“But, I want you to think only of me, by your own choice—I want you to still love him and still choose me. Not in comparison, but because you just want me more than the ghost of him.”
He sighs and slowly lets me go.
Gently, he pets Little Bird’s head. Saying goodnight to her on the edge of the rocks before he then swims away down the little stream we’ve made—in what I can only describe as a pouting fashion.
Before meeting Lir, I would’ve never thought of swimming as a sign language of emotion, but he really expresses himself clearly with the motion of his tail.
I splash my hands at the surface but he just sits in the shadow at the bottom hidden in kelp, shrouded by the reflection of the sky on the dark water.
I know what I said hurt him, but it’s not just about what he’s not, it’s about what I'm not too. I’m not made for him, there’s nothing I could give him.
All I have are fucking crackers and wool sweaters!
He probably just has Stockholm syndrome for his captor on this stupid rock.
I should go back to work, it’s a clear night and the wind is blowing warm.
Ships will probably start passing by again soon.
Eventually, I give up and go back inside feeling defeated that I’ve managed to really hurt Lir.
I sleep from daybreak until late in the afternoon, way past just relieving exhaustion, but also not wanting to face him. Maybe, I should avoid him. Once the moat back to the ocean is dug, he can go back to avoiding humans and I can go back to being, I feel a deep pang…alone.
A faint tapping climbs up the stairs. I jolt up and only realize my hypocrisy once I’m already halfway down the spiral, “Stupid, stupid, stupid. You said avoiding!” But now, it’s only a few steps and the gentle knocking continues.
I open the door, “Okay, that was my bad last night and if you never want to see me again—“
Suddenly, a warm folded bundle appears in my hands. A minky green loosely woven soft sweater unfurls. “What is this, Lir?”
“I was going to give it to you yesterday, but I acted so stupid,” he sighs, “I don’t know about everything on land, and sometimes I try to pretend I do. I am sorry, I really—”
I jump forward from kneeling on the rocks and hug him, splashing in the invigoratingly cold water with him. “I love it!” I rub my face against it, squished into its sinking soft texture. “Ith tho thoft!” I lisp, my voice being muffled by its luxurious weave.
He laughs at my silly reaction, “Well, when you were bathing I saw those red dots all over you and…”
“You were looking that closely?”
He is the one blushing now. “You were always complaining about how you were allergic to that unraveling wool thing you wore. This one’s made from kelp I’ve been weaving…trying to weave…” He peers at me through a coin sized hole in the yarn.
“It’s perfect! I love it!” I crash down on him again and kiss him softly, then gently, then fervently. I want him to know what it’s for, what I am. Not a lighthouse keeper, not a heartless ghost that haunts this rock; I am a woman—
A woman.
“I love it, Lir.” I sigh breathlessly.
We splash around, giggling and pulling towards each other in any which way we can.
His hands massaging my scalp desperately pulling me closer, he’s been easily moving rocks and boulders, but it’s different when it’s my own body grabbed up in plentiful squeezes under his palms. They pull at my hair and move me around at his whim.
I can’t believe I'm the one that dragged him across the shore, when he can so easily push and pull me as he pleases.
After awhile, I realize I’m sitting up on his lap, riding him—our bodies fusing together at the hip. I soak in the delicious delights before me, wanting to devour him whole and leave behind the fish bones on a silver plate.
Allowing myself to look down all over him, I knew he was beautiful like an other worldly creature, but I am truly seeing him as a man, and probably the most handsome one on this side of the Arctic Circle—if not the whole world.
The lines of his face and body, they seem so perfect, so thought out that I imagine him built with gold-leafed trusses and beams instead of bones and flesh.
The way the droplets of water drip down from his brow bone, over his lashes and then in a slow lingering trails across his cheekbones.
Whatever holy engineer designed him, must have considered each and every pathway the water took across his face in these divine aqueducts.
His breathing grows in intensity while returning my gaze.
Rubbing his hands up and down my body, Just the very pads of his fingers squeeze and exploring under my garments.
Goosebumps erupt from my skin, not from the cold, but in anticipation as he pauses to study my face for each reaction between his gentle kisses.
I can feel the corners of his mouth arching into a smile, the bow of his lips pulled and stretched not able to decide to grin or purse.
I have stared at these lips so many times, I feel I already know them.
His touch feels so natural pushed into mine.
Fizzling buzzes of electricity spark across the roofs of our mouths, as if all the saltwater in his body is corroding away a battery of energy that passes between us on the tips of or tongues.
Even with his claws, he doesn’t struggle to unbutton my oversized men’s shirt.
Its stiff and prickly fabric is promptly swept away from my softened skin.
To my surprise his mouth moves to the peak of my breast, drawn to his lips like the tide to the moon.
Interlocking together as he teases me with his tongue, looking up into my eyes as I gasp against him.
He looks at me as if he is chasing towards something.
Was he patiently waiting to do all of this to me?
How does a merman already know the places make me moan and gasp?
I shake my head, wanting to shake away my ever skeptical internal dialogue right out of my ears!
It’s all happening so quickly, but I can’t help but grind as I pant against his touch.
Molten lava is dripping out of my pores that could burn us both up into ash.
He gnaws ever so tenderly as if to pull out a stray thread from a silk chemise without snagging it.
His hands envelop every part of me, squeezing me closer into his suffocating embrace as if they had just been unbound from an invisible hold, held back by my permission.
He has been waiting so patiently for my permission.
Lir looks up at me, stroking my back while pausing his fervent exploratory expedition all over my body. “I feel like there’s something else I’m supposed to be doing, some next step—but, I just don't know what it is, or how I could—”
All the embering coals he has bellowed in my stomach rise up instantly into my cheeks.
I can tell he’s feeling shy too, letting his dark hair fall across his face and not bothering to tuck it behind his ear.
He goes back and forth like this, between suave and self-assured to being adorably nervous when it comes to these very human things.
I wonder what Lir knows of intimacy and I desperately want him to want me.
In my brief experience, I thought I simply had to be with Eli because he was my first, because I had shared that quick intimacy with him.
But, you know what’s intimate? Watching your mother die, burying your husband when there isn’t even a body, being in a cold empty house alone, and being out here at a damn lighthouse in the middle of the ocean with only yourself to take care of you.
That’s intimacy. And I’ve done it all with myself!
And now with Lir, pulling him out of the water, and fighting against the rain and wind while strapped together.
That’s intimacy. I don’t need more, fucking is not the highest peg on my list of it.
Looking down, I follow where his stomach turns to scales and then seamlessly into his tail.
I don't want him to feel lacking in any sort of way just because we can’t do— that.
Not wanting him to feel let down or to rant out loud at him in this very tender moment I hastily respond, “This is great!” Quickly nodding happily to convince the both of us.
“So, kissing and touching is how humans show they love each other—” I cough.
“Like each other, and that’s what we’re doing. ”
He follows every word I say and thinks over them carefully. His eyes lighting up like a bulb turning on. “Love.” He recites quietly.
That’s not the part I expect him to focus on, being half-man after all, but I blush that I let it slip out.
It’s a confirmation to myself as well. That my heart is able to re-inflate with steam, that the pistons were not too worn to never move again.
Lir holds my face, and I worry clouds of hot air are exhausting out of my ears from the furnace he restarted within me.
In a perfect press fit that any machinist would be proud of, he brings his lips into mine.
A purposeful kiss, a desperate kiss that feels like I could be completely burnt up under from the pressure of his lips.
I pull away, but only for a moment, a second for the valve to the release before being drawn back into to his mouth.