Splice Part II
The next morning, Lir makes me a miniature feast that I so gratefully praise him for.
So much that it almost sounds sarcastic, but it is truly a delicious delight.
He has taken my provisional crackers and crushed them into a fine dust that he has rolled cleaned fresh shrimp into.
Lir has now become quite familiar with my camping stove and expertly lays the breaded shrimp into the lard bubbling cast iron above the cobalt propane flame.
They sizzle until golden brown and then are laid across little beds of fluffed rice.
“Mmm. Thank you Lir!” I exclaim. He eats happily satisfied with my response. “Will you help me out today?” I ask. He nods slurping a whole shrimp, not leaving even the crispy tail behind.
“I need help getting up and down into the basement.” He continues nodding and eating. “The last time I went down there, I had a hell of a time getting back out.”
He stops munching and looks up quickly, his brows pressed together. “You went down there while I was gone?”
I nod, and he shakes his head. He’s not mad, but I know how protective he is of me, especially against things he doesn’t understand—in places he cannot reach.
“Of course I’ll help you.”
After breakfast, I put on goggles and thick leather gloves and let Lir lower me on a rope into the trap door.
He hands an oil lamp down behind me. Its reservoir is full and I know this one won’t run out of fuel while I’m down here.
He’s more nervous this time because he can’t fit through the door anymore to watch my descent down the stairs.
I call out to him once I reach the first set of gears to reassure him, “All good down here!”
I follow the cords on the ceiling to the antenna once again and when I am below the direct flow lines which intercross into the antenna from the cipher, I disconnect their brass bracket holding them to the ceiling.
With the medical scalpel I ever so delicately slice away the rubber from one of the covered tubes exposing the copper within.
The bright untarnished wire just below the surface shimmers in the lamp light.
It peels back reminiscent of Lir’s shedding skin with his vivid scales beneath.
Waiting for a long time, what seems like forever in fact, as my legs grow numb in my uncomfortable crouch while listening for any movement of the antenna.
I don’t want to disrupt any messages again and therefore need to accomplish this in one fluid motion.
Upstairs, I had practiced on some spare cords in the radio room with the help of some service manuals to even figure out what I wanted to do, but now this is the real thing and I’m damaging government and military property for my own curiosity.
It gives me pause. “What am I even doing?”
I’m not a specialist. I mean my brother and I had spliced into our neighbor’s radio line once so we could listen to jazz like little pirates, but this is crazy! This is way out of my league. My hand shakes a little but I think of when I had to surgically stitch up Lir and this isn’t nearly as bad.
The humming goes quiet and I quickly split the speaker wire with a pig-tail connection interlacing in my auxiliary from the transceiver upstairs.
Repeating the same microscopic motion, I split a different coax cable leading from the antenna to connect into my tuner.
At least I’ll get music and news through the air at crystal clear quality patched into this thing.
Tiny droplets of my sweat fall with splats onto the impermeable rubber.
The split will begin to corrode and oxidize if it stays exposed to the salty air, so I brush on glue from a tin I found in the shed and wrap rubberized tape for buoy repair around it.
These aren’t the proper electrical tools, but it’ll have to work.
It’s not like I can just order implements for vandalism on my next supply drop.
The bottom of my shirt becomes a convenient and now very damp rag to wipe away at my forehead. Hunkering towards the wall, I follow the cords back along the catwalk. Lir waits patiently in the doorway outside the trap door.
I bore a hole earlier in the soft waterlogged wood floor with some other tools I found and run my new cables through it before my ascension.
When his strong arm pulls up the rope gracefully from the dark hole, I’m happy to not flop around like last time. My feet had kicked helplessly in the air for a long while before I was able to pull myself up.
After Lir checks me over for any scrapes and is satisfied, I go up to the radio room to check the connection.
I can’t decode what they’re saying yet, but maybe eventually we’ll have some more control over what’s happening here, at least some warning before anyone else drops in on us if there’s a lot of chatter and activity.
I come back downstairs and bring Lir close to me.
Snuggling into him, my whole torso now fits comfortably in the crook of his arm.
That room makes him nervous too and he palms all over me.
Upon closing up the floor to that dark unreachable place, he becomes instantly relieved.
Yet, his nails still dig into the wood of the door frame. “I hate when you go down there.”
“Are you upset at me, that I know more about the beast in the basement than you?”
“Upset with you? About knowledge?” He tilts his head as if he does not understand.
“If I was better at something than the school yard boys, better at something than my brother, or than my husband…well, they all always found some reason—some fault in my doing it.” I rub the back of my neck
He shakes his head. “I worry for your safety, yes, Andrea. But, it is because I cannot follow you, because I do not understand—but no, I do not fault you. Andrea to me—if I haven’t made my feelings clear, I find it all—you specifically— incredible.”
I want to live in his smile. I want to curl up in his divoted cupid’s bow, and hang stars from the upturned corners of his lips.
His slightly crooked canines sparkle on their own as he grins and I am able to forget about the cords in the basement.
I wish to just follow and catalogue the lines in his face.
Clasping my hands tightly in that warm embrace, in oven mitts which have just reached out of the hearth.
He whispers to me, “Andrea, I think you are—I do not wish to sound like the men who gave you false hopes and promises. I wish—” He presses my hands into his tight knit brow, burning his face in our nest of intertwined fingers.
“I wish you could see everything you are. Not by just what you are to me, not just through words that flow from my mouth, that could make some proof to you and by that spell declaring your value.”
The golden pools he looks up at me with are polished into a mirror that I can see my true reflection.
“You are inherently valuable Andrea. A true law of nature, so real that it must be so, observed and thus declared by poets, scientists and philosophers—by silly mermen who bear witness to you on this rock.” Lir lifts me into the air.
Our faces grow close, our lips gently grazing each other, every movement of his mouth forming the words I crave. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Lir.”
Holding up close to him and we look at each other a long time. What I want to do is tear off my clothes again, but my stomach growls, “Alright! Let’s make dinner.” He claps his hands together. “I’m starving, I’ll go get an octopus! That will be plenty for the both of us.”
I look at him worried. “Are you going to devour everything within the vicinity of this rock?”
“My appetite has grown—and expanded.” He smiles.
I scoff, “Now that you’re so much larger, it’s like you’re eating for two.”
With that, Lir swoops in closer to me, his words serious again, “I wish I could make that happen for you, for us.”
Caught up in his hands, my cheeks burn, “Please don’t.” I stammer. Unable to form the words together that I want to tell him. “The octopus.”
“The what—” He looks embarrassed for a moment, in fact, he is actually blushing. “Oh, the octopus—“
I’m so thrown off by what Lir has said, by what could happen between us, that I hadn’t even considered even though we’ve been—
“I still can’t do it,” I quickly clarify, “The octopus. Even if it is eight limbs of tender—delicious meat. Well, they seem smarter than most people I’ve met in my life.”
Why are we even having these two conversations at once. “Abalone! Get some abalone and I’ll grill it for us.” He looks like he’s going to try to convince me, but I muster up one more plead, “Please.”
He nods, turning to comply with my request, but before he submerges under the water, “Lir—” my voice cracks.
“Yes? You want something else.”
“I want that with you.”
“To—eat octopus?” His voice falters, confused again.
“No. Still no,” I laugh, but it turns into stammering, “Th—the other thing. Someday.”
“I’d wait through every someday, for the rest of my life, if it was with you Andrea.”
With that he swims away, but soon returning with his woven bag full of the iridescent shells of abalone.
We place a few logs into the fire pit we built from our moat’s rocks.
It ignites slowly as we both blow on the kindling after throwing in a match.
My breath pales in comparison to his, but I still like to think I’m contributing.
The wood burns down into roaring coals which I set a small grate over.
Lir easily pulls apart the sealed shells that we’ve been soaking in clean salt water.
The meat sizzles satisfyingly as soon as it hits the metal, the savory smoke wafting directly onto my tongue. My mouth salivates from the charcoal smoked goodness billowing in the space between us. With a fork I peel off the lightly charred flesh which still sizzles as I gnaw at it.
Lir picks it up with his pinched claws and devours it with one bite, knocking his head back as he consumes it.
The chewy fillet pleasantly lacks the same fish like flavor that mussels and oysters possess.
Instead, my mouth is greeted by what must be considered the dessert version of shellfish, a subtle sweetness that only leaves me in wanting for more.
Lir without me saying anything cracks open more, too many in fact! Trying to please me, he pries countless open before I can tell him to stop. I was hoping to save some in the pool for tomorrow, but once they’re open we have no choice but to feast.
Afterwards, we bask on the sun warmed rocks. The time when the sun lowers below the ever-looming cloud cover but before it disappears behind the ocean is always the warmest part of the day. I let my uncovered legs soak in the last bit of daylight before I return to my tower for the evening.
I kiss Lir knowing he will return to the sea once again tonight and my heart twists in jealousy.
He has outgrown spending all his time in these tide pools.
Small patters of rain are just beginning their descent upon us.
Now, I’m grateful for their arrival, each droplet of water a reminder of my lover, a descending tether of my world to his.
As the water runs across my skin, I hope later he will be able to taste the essence of me on it in the sea.
I bid him goodnight, it is so difficult for our hands to part.
Though other parts of us have connected in all multitudes of configurations, it is still my hand in his which I so often crave.
I adjust the transceiver in the radio room as I watch him swim off.
I can hear the whirs and clicks amplified making their melodic calculated hums more formulaic.
I’ll have to log some serious hours here before I can say I have any sort of translation.
I close my notebook after scribbling a little more useless chicken scratch and wind the generator for the bulb tonight.
The ink from my pen dries on the left open pages in the last tangerine light of the setting sun.
Hidden among the crossed out numbers, the useless symbols, and indecipherable gibberish, one word has been traced over and over between them—
Someday.