Andrea’s Epilogue
Andrea’s Epilogue
Strong fingers run precisely through my hair, their claws scratching against my scalp.
I used to worry, just as I worry about everything—that I loved Lir only in a vacuum.
But, in these moments when he is stretched out next to me, his hands in my hair, each strand one of thousands a witness to our love—I don’t really care. I don’t give a damn at all.
As we soak in the early light of morning, I rub my cheek into the warm sand between us.
Maroon velvet washes across the water, over the beach and up over our skin.
Lir is braiding my hair and I start braiding his in turn.
Just as the sun rises and the moon sets I feel like we could stay interwoven perpetually in each other’s orbit.
I think he’s done braiding my hair, but then he clicks his tongue. “Not perfect.” He runs his hands back through and starts again.
“It doesn’t need to be perfect,” I whisper, my voice hoarse as I speak the first words of the new day which rises far off across the sea.
“It should be. For you.” He kisses along my shoulder while his fingers play harp strings behind the smallest part of my spine.
His knuckles just barely brush over the little vertebrae, but to me they play out the sweetest melody.
The notes running up my skin are each their own small frantic sprite that showers kisses across my body.
I shiver from the sensation and fall closer into him for relief.
The God of mirth’s cup is beginning to dry up.
The wine colored shroud, dusky and cool is being lifted away from the sky, but for now we are still under its drunken haze in which we can tell all of our secrets within.
Where we can be just two people anywhere in the world.
The copper bottom of Dionysus’ goblet is visible as the light changes to amber and crests across the shore of this hidden lagoon we rested in last night.
The rising sun illuminates our skin and eyes, showing all our truths bright and clear.
Even so, uncovered from the shroud of night, anywhere and anytime I would want to be with you Lir.
My hands follow the contours of his face as I bury my own into the crook of his neck. My words are muffled through my smile, “I’ve completely fallen in love with you.”
I knew the beauty of sunrises and sunsets, I wasn’t completely dulled to the sensations of life, but now seeing those colors in the swelling up conception of day, mirrored in Lir’s eyes.
I can now pick out how each fiber of color as individually perfect and unique.
A divine gift that I only dream of plucking into my palm.
He in turn plucks up a strand of my hair and studies it ardently and I know, I absolutely know he is woven into the same dream here with me, right now.
Witnessing all the ways we are pleated into each other like fine strands in a complex tartan.
We are the same cloth, the same tapestry.
For the first time in my life I feel whole.
All these thoughts flow effortlessly out of my heart, which has become a tap I can no longer turn off.
I do overthink everything after all, a testament that though my body has changed, that I am still my neurotic self.
Nonetheless, I do need to live more like Lir.
Not just a witness to all these wonders, but living them in every delicate moment.
He doesn’t think to breathe on land, nor in water.
He simply does as—I must simply do, as I must simply love him.
I pull myself out of these rolling dreams and back to the reality where Lir truly does exist. The sea now glitters in blinding intensity, the final show before it is simply day and I live. We live here—right now.
“I guess since you saved me again, you don't owe me anything now.” I say, admiring the plaited piece of his hair in my palm.
“I owe you every piece of me, Andrea. You own me completely, every part of my body and soul.” He closes my hand around it and I use it to gently pull him towards me.
We rest back, each grain of sand supportive as I am sinking into a bed which the crust of the earth conforms to delicately embrace me within.
Ah, no more wool against my skin. Every particulate of water splashing up feels like a happy invitation to return back to the ocean.
My pewter scales, my own personal stationary, flutter softly in response—soon.
Lir must have really pitied me for not being wrapped in his version of clothing.
The sea itself is the most perfect garment.
The sun, now warm and plentiful, shines through billowing clouds to reflect off of Lir’s tail.
I smile looking at us side by side, silver and gold together at last. Both refracting in such luminous glitterings like poured tin ornaments held to candlelight.
That moment in which we laid in the wake of our destruction, when he saw my scales and fins, he wept for fear he had done something to me against my wishes.
I have been trying to prove otherwise with my absolute joy as I indulge in my new body, my new existence in the ocean.
Last time my body changed without my command, the next metamorphosis I want to make must be a purposeful construction between our intermeshed hearts.
I lean down to kiss him, but stop just before his lips. “Someday, has arrived Lir. It has crested over the horizon this morning.”
He looks at me shocked. “Andrea—” He takes me up into his arms, rolling until we are covered in a patchy coating of sand. “I want nothing more than to be with you, to cherish you—and our child. I would love them, just as I love you. I swear to you, I would love them infinitely.”
Propping myself over him, my shadow just barely covering his face for the golden rays cresting over us. I ask him blatantly, “Why do you want a child with me, Lir?”
“I can’t imagine it’s for legacy, or that you have a family member nagging you to do it…is it some biological drive only?” I genuinely want to know, after seeing generations of men father children just because, or because it just happened with no agency, no purpose—I need to hear his honest answer.
I turn my face to stone, like that I of a statue at the bottom of the sea. No adjustments in its mask that could sway his thoughts in any direction. I simply wish to know his answer. I don’t know what kind of answer I expect—anything I could have inferred about human men, simply does not apply.
Lir pauses a long while and even him thinking over his words makes me feel more hopeful for his conclusion. This is something I love about him, he doesn’t laugh me off. Even with his playful personality, when he knows that my heart requires it—he takes me completely seriously.
I don’t know how he even can pull me even closer, but he accomplishes the feat with ease.
“I only wish, with this cure that we have found for the red-tide that had seeped between our bones, that could climb up those stairs to you at that lighthouse. That deep loneliness that gnawed away at us—” His voice cracks a little, breaking away at its raw edges.
“I want to further quell the silent malady that had so long weighed on your heart, in both of our hearts.” Cracks of light still slip between my limbs that light up his face as he speaks, “I only wish for our lives to be filled with more love than we have ever thought possible, now that we know it exists in the world.”
My heart stutters, and then so does his voice, “But, I don't even know if we can, if we can make a child together—”
“Well, let’s die—let’s live trying.” I smile, kissing him in the warm morning light that dapples across us and our ocean.