Kalahira, Kalahira!

There is something wrong here.

The Shores, the Sea, I hear your waves, and the sand is at my feet!

But the face I dreamt of;

his tide-pool eyes - black in green and red and his voice like the deep!

This face I dreamt of, to keep me sane as the world shatters in its fear!

He is not here, Mistress of the Depths.

He is not here.

Kalahira, please, I beg of you;

Let this be a nightmare only,

and let the black trees melt back into place;

Let them cover the ocean before me

make the crashing of your waters be the whispers of those long lost!

I cannot stand it if this is my reality!

Life spent without him was enough to splinter me;

His death, it haunts me still; that last ragged breath;

To never see him walk along these beaches will be too much.

If this is the afterlife I am meant for,

then let me stumble among the undead;

unaware and with eyes glazed, ready to be shot down; a soul lost for good.

I would prefer it to facing this possibility.

The thought of this as punishment

for the devil deeds I've committed and those whose lives I've taken.

Is he not here because he never took a step upon these shores, Kalahira?

Or, is the fear I feel now truer?

That he has moved onward without waiting for me

and left me to wander this place, not knowing where to go.

In favor of a love who may have been waiting;

Has he instead grasped her hand, the one who truly held his soul

and loved him in a way I never could have touched?

I do not blame him, Kalahira,

From what he says she was the mortality of your Sister-God;

And who cannot love such a woman,

with her eyes like sunsets set in a face familiar to him?

Or maybe, Kalahira, he did feel my hand in his.

saw my footprints in the sand, walking this shore with him

though I was not there beside him.

Maybe my own ghost haunted his steps;

as a disembodied voice filled with prayers; a burden!

In an afterlife of peace.

But no! But no -

I cannot falter now that I am here.

This faith he instilled in me during our time spent hand-in-hand

I will keep it close; hidden; obscured if need be so.

And I will stand ankle-deep in your waters, Goddess of Inscrutable Depths,

for however long I must stare out into the sunset.

Because how can I do otherwise, Kalahira?

I love him and so can only hope;

perhaps foolishly, selfishly, that he will come to take my hand

and haunt me as I might have done him.