They say he haunts the shorelines, an old man with a long white beard, wispy and iridescent in the moonlight. His eyes are dark, glinting and searching, always searching. He never goes beyond the surf and never comes fully out of the water; they say he is bound to the sea and the deep, dark fathoms. He calls out into the night, some name unknown to them, always calling. He pauses to look around him, searching, searching. He moves on again, on down the shoreline.
He only ever comes at night. They say he is a creature of darkness, a demon come to lure their children away to the sea, to drown there as the sailors are drowned by the sirens and their sweet voices. But they don't know, they don't understand, for they've never stopped to listen.
There is a sorrow in his voice, deep and hollow, a void once filled with a light that was the sun to him. He didn't always looks this old. His back was straight once, not so long ago. His eyes were filled with light, his brow was magnificent, his rule was the greatest of the sea, nay, of the world. It was sorrow that reduced him to an old man, sorrow and regret.
He searches, yes, not for children to drown, but for his own child, a daughter with eyes like the sea, but hair that sparkled as the sunlight hitting the water on a clear day. She was the world to him, to all of them, under the sea. She was a beautiful child, her laugh sweeter than the porpoise's talk, her smile brighter than any of the coral that lay on the floor of the sea. She was vibrant, more than anything else in the sea.
She left one day to never return. He worries; she always had a dangerous love, a yearning for the surface. After she was allowed to see it, something changed in her. He didn't see it then, but looking back, he sees it now. She was lonely in the wide empty spaces in the deep; she found no joy in the bright red flowers she used to love tending. They weren't bright enough for her, not now. She was never meant for the cold and the dark under the sea; she wanted to feel the sun warming her face, see the sand sparkling beneath the toes she didn't have, not then.
He knows she went to the surface; there was nowhere else she would go. The bright world above called to her, even as the deep, cool water called to him. He sighs as he knows he is very different from her. Where he was dark, she was bright, where he loved the water, she loved the air, and where he was cold, she was warm. He is not angry, not anymore; he just wants to see his daughter. He wants to know that she's alright, that she's happy, wherever she is, but she will not come to him, she cannot. Either her ears are deafened, her eyes blinded, or she is bound away from the sea, trapped upon dry land. Or else she is gone.
A deep sense of dread fills him as he searches. Whatever magic or enchantment brought her to this land, it was not his own, and that left only one other option. He would have helped her, if she had just asked him. Or perhaps he wouldn't have, perhaps he would have been angry then, perhaps he would have told her to leave it alone; the land under the sun could surely not hold her affections more than her own home. But he knows that it had never been her home, not really.
More than anything he wishes she wouldn't have felt so alone, for surely she did, if she thought that the only friend to her in the entire sea was the feared sea witch of dark magic and cold rage. He wasn't sure how she'd come to that point; he wishes he could have stopped it. He was her friend, he was her father, could he not have saved her from her grief?
He calls her name again, desperately, into the night air and the sharp, cold wind. Again, there is nothing. He sighs and continues; he'll just go a short way now, not much longer. Light has begun to rise in the east. He will return on the morrow, to search again. There are footsteps behind him, quick-paced and running towards him, thumping lightly in the sand.
He turns, his heart beating fast in his chest. Could it be her, could it be his daughter at last? No, it is a man, young and human, likely just trying to catch a glimpse of him, the terror from the seas, as he'd heard them refer to him. It was not her, it would never be her. He turned away again, spoke her name again; he no longer cared who heard him or saw him.
"She's not here!" the man shouted, running towards him still, half stumbling down the beach, past the green, dry seaweed that swayed in the wind, through the soft sand that slipped beneath his feet.
He stopped and turned to look. He felt like his heart would stop beating. She's not here, it echoed through his brain, reverberating. No, she—where else would she be? This was where she'd come, he knew it was. How would this young man know anyway?
The sounds came louder, as the man came closer. His feet splashed loudly into the water, coming up to his knees in it, a mere few feet away. "She's not here," he repeated again, between breaths.
He looked at the man carefully. His clothes were grand, as a royal's would be. He was human; his legs seemed to stick out oddly from him, where his tail should have been. His face was kind, though, and he shared the same brightness that she'd had, before she disappeared. His face was sad, though.
"What—what do you mean?" the old man asked at last.
The young man sighed. "I mean...you won't find what you're looking for here, sir."
It was then that he noted the foam, bubbling and white against the dark shale rocks that dotted the shoreline, glittering, glittering. He felt his hands trembling, his vision blurring. Gone. That was it, then. All his searching, all his hope, gone.
He turned away quickly; he didn't want to speak to the man any more. He began swimming in the other direction, unaware, numb. He glided over the surface, floating, with no mind to where he was going or what he would do, now that it was over. He turned back after a moment, glanced at the man there, watching him with a painful expression on his face.
The man shook his head slightly. "She...she loved me. I didn't understand then. She was so...bright in life, sir. I—I'm sorry. She...couldn't talk, but...she had a beautiful voice, didn't she?"
He nodded and turned away again, continuing out to sea. He didn't look back this time. It hurt too much, to see the things that she loved, the things she'd lived and died for. She was too bright, even for the human world that she loved. A soft breeze blew around him, gently, softly. He felt tears rolling down his cheeks, before they splashed into the waves, rippling out in circles around him.
He watched them, and he'd never felt so alone. The breeze didn't leave him alone, though. It seemed to blow around him in circles, whooshing dizzily. It almost seemed to laugh at him, mockingly, he thought. But...not mockingly at all, really. There were leaves and petals floating in it, bright splashes of green and pink and orange. Bright...like her.
He comes to the surface occasionally now, during the daytime. He sees the world she loved. He sees the sun, shining as golden as her hair, he sees the land, green and abundant in color, and he sees the sky, blue, as the sea was blue. He decides that maybe they weren't so different after all, he and his daughter.
He knows that wherever she is, whether dancing on the back of some wave or laughing as she floats and sings with the wind, she is happy.
Well, what did you think? I wanted to write something about the other side, how her family would miss her, too. Tell me what you think!