I saw her there, wading into the waves as they crashed about her knees. Pale rose hair gleamed dimly in the moonlight, tangling in the breeze. Faint muttering reached my ears, words so hushed I could not make them out over the gurgling of the water. Leaning forward over the edge of the low cliff, I stretched nearer, needing to understand the lilting melody as it drifted about the cavern.
The cavern I had wandered across looked as if it had been underwater at one point in its existance. The walls were worn, eroding in places as they reached and curved upwards to meet at a tiny opening. 'I could squeeze out of there,' I mused, 'If only I could climb high enough to reach it.' My gaze caught on shards and fragments of items from a world once lost. Metal glinted, statues crumbled. It was a wastland, hidden away in the side of, what appeared on the outside, a large rock.
The wind shifted, gaining strength as the girl lifted her arms. Her voice rang out comanding the water to raise. It bubbled and surged about her, flowing out from beneath where she stood. She was a sight, lit up from some unearthly glow that seemed to radiate out of her very being. I took in her soft skin, splashes of freckles ran over her shoulders, the bridge of her nose, down an exposed hip as though painted by the same Gods who created the lilium. Reaching out to a ledge nearest her, she retrieved a simple blade. The air stilled very suddenly as this beautiful creature slit the braided belt that help together her soaked slip of a gown and bared herself to the moonlight. Her back arched. I watched in horror as she thrust the tip of the knife into her right thigh. Her scream rang out as she ripped her flesh, the now motionless water below her murky and red with blood.
I clamped my hands over my mouth, forcing back the urge to vomit. Swift movement from the females knife as she carved an unknown symbol into her skin. Ragged breathing, hers and mine, the only sounds now. I watched as the knife fell from her hand. I gasped, losing my balance as the precipice collapsed from under me, throwing me into the bloodstained depths. I hit hard, the water more shallow in this spot than I had anticipated. I couldn't breathe, my lung screamed for oxygen. 'I'm drowning in her!' Flailing, I forced my body to react. Half rolling half swimming onto my feet. "Transverto corpus meum sanguinem meum!"
Once my head cleared the surface I sputtered, pain encompassing my side. Lathargic fingers drifted to the area, trembling over a deep laceration. But I could not concintrate on my own pain for in the next moment a resounded cackle erupted, turning into a wail as the sea once more began to churn and boil. To my shock I watched as this creature was heaved into the air, her body surrounded by a thick fog. The light in the cavern, what little there had been from the hole in the ceiling, turned a sickly green and before my own eyes I watched as her frail form contorted. I could hear her bones breaking, feel the fog pulsate in exitement as her legs came together. Flesh and muscle ripping as scales protruded over her, a strange buldge began where her feet had once been, along her spine, on the back of her arms. She cried out as fins ruptured from these locations.
My body burned in the ice cold water, I could not catch my breath. I felt as if something encircled my wrists, I felt myself being pulled down. The last thing I remember before unconsciousness claimed me, before the weight of the tormented water fully encompassed my sight was the woman's eyes; Strikingly blue even in the eery green haze.
** "Transverto corpus meum sanguinem meum" is Latin for 'transform my body my blood'.