Chapter 28 Lir’s Ocean
Lir’s Ocean
Lir
Beams of sterling light bend from the prism of overhead water which folds up over me like that of the fabric I wove for Andrea’s sweater.
I hope it is holding her, comforting her in my absence just as the sea’s arms hold me tightly now.
Cerulean cold water drifts in layers down to the sea floor in distinct shelves of depth that refract the light as they slowly disappear from visible spectrum.
In this dark cold water, sight does not matter much anyways.
More importantly is the taste of salt water on my tongue, the change in temperature, the texture of the water thickening with the presence of another being.
I have been living in Andrea’s world, and I am comforted to be back within my familiar senses. Yet—
Yet, is the word of the hour, of every second I am parted from her.
Yet, to be back in my domain, the place that I am considered a God should appease me, but the song of my disciples falls flat and the pews are empty if she does not sit within them.
No, if she is not the sacred relic itself that I am able to curl up beneath her lit temple.
The tide has shifted within me and to have the span of the sea in my arms means nothing without her within it.
I was used to solitude before, but this new feeling of loneliness, one which I have taken some of the burden off Andrea and into my own heart, where it slowly multiplies through my veins.
Now, with every little shell and rocky bit of sand, I stop to think it all to be something interesting I’d like to tell her about, to present to her as an offering.
I want to watch her react to every possible iteration of the sea, for her to witness everything that makes life worth living.
The feeling had started out small, but suddenly I can’t ignore it.
The water against my skin seems too close, that same water in my gills too empty, like it no longer contains oxygen.
I can’t breathe anymore without her in my view.
My body has adapted without my knowledge, an evolutionary thread now woven into the fiber of my being, that without her I will surely perish.
I almost can’t take the pain, the most sickening hunger that divides and rearranges my stomach and heart into one distorted organ which pangs in anxiety without her.
It is all culminated into a disgusting desire to hoard her away in no way that she could be happy, no way that she could survive.
I will return to land soon enough, if you could call her rock that.
It has felt incredible to be back in the ocean, a beyond words relief in biological necessity, but my chest, my heart, it all aches for Andrea.
It must be that word that has accidentally fallen from her lips. That word that hangs between us, like the billowing fog. As unseen, but as ever present, as essential as the air. I love Andrea.
Not just because she had me trapped in her tiny pool. Not just because she saved me and I her—no, it is something entirely different. Something so inherent in her soul that I could pick it out from grains of sand.
I love her and I do not care that it’s a human feeling for a human person. I am half man after all—half a man…and she must be the other half.
Swimming further down, I glide across the bottom of low silted sand, just letting the currents of the ocean drift me along with the sparse seagrass and numerous plankton.
Little scallops flutter past me in their comical dancing swim.
Speckled crabs fight over territory and glass containers they wish to hide within, making do with what they can out of the human detritus which is scattered on the ocean floor.
Silver fish stay as close as possible to whichever protector they have chosen, a bit of eelgrass, a small patch of lace woven coral, or even an anemone they have a symbiotic relationship with.
I look out into the vast deep blue, I wish Andrea would cling to me as these creatures do to their mutualistic companions.
I try to think of something I can bring back to her to prove I am not just a parasitic attachment, to show that I can do something for her.
Ahead, in the dappled barely visible light of the cold ocean, a sunken vessel sticks out between two rocks.
From far away, one could mistake the crumpled shape for a whale fall, but upon closer inspection it’s a man-made ship which is so covered in urchins, starfish and mollusks that it’s become a monument that is completely incorporated into the sea.
Hm, so nice of them to crash here and make a new reef.
Squeezing through a porthole, I slip past a sleeping shark and nod as it watches me through glossed over dreamy eyes.
It might be the one thing on this side of the ocean older than me.
Many a creature that hibernates beyond the Arctic Circle is one of my peers in long lives, but this scarred being has seen animals that no longer exist. It has seen asteroids decimate the land and will continue to guard over the sea long after I have died.
The scarred and dimpled shark watches me for a moment, but soon returns to its slumber in the alcove, a merman is nothing interesting to this being that probably witnessed Atlantis sink.
I dig through the hull storage looking for treasures lost to time, items that would normally have no value to me.
Eventually, in the bottom of the pile I find a tapered object with a heavy base and scrape a layer of thin tarnish with my thumb claw.
Beneath the oxidized film the cup shimmers the color of Andrea’s hair.
With a little polishing it will probably shine as bright as my scales.
How alike we are, Andrea and I, not just in our matching copper tone, but so compatible in spirit that the inconsistencies we face in our physical forms have no matter to me.
I grunt, tiny bubbles escaping from my mouth, I want her again.
And as many times as I have her, in any which way, it will never be enough.
I inhale ocean water, trying to ground myself.
Trying to stave off the heat with the arctic brine, the heat which has been boiling in my stomach and that has become harder and harder to relieve.
How I lived so stagnant before that this unquenchable burning could so easily overtake all my senses.
On my way out, I nod once more at my old friend and make my way back to the churning surface.
A sheet of rain is sweeping out from the coast, making visibility murky both above and below the swells.
I try instead to listen to navigate, but a shrill noise similar to that which caused me to crash is moving through the ocean and air again.
To close my eardrums I grit my jaw, but even then it moves through my bones and flesh.
It comes not from the direction of Andrea, but from where I see that a warm dull light flickers in the distance.
Refracting the light like the monstrous eye of a giant squid.
A quick warning before the bite of its beak.
I won’t be able to use my other senses to get back to the lighthouse over its jarring screech.
The lighthouse that everything seems to rotate around, that the whole world appears to spiral towards.
Conveniently, my lady lives atop that bright glowing beacon and I soon lock onto its rotating blinking in the far off horizon to guide me back to her.