Prompt:
68;
Tori Amos song titles
Character/s:
Kalasin, Roald, ?
Words:
288
Strange
little girl
In
the summer, humans crowd the sea. Sweating men battle through the
waves; naked children run and shout in the foam. Women chase after
them, skirts hitched up above the water and sand sticking in their
hair.
In winter, the beach is abandoned, desolate.
She comes regardless of the season.
She is a novel entertainment for him and his sisters; her and her inexplicable love for the sea, weak and ungainly as she is. Small and slender; pale as the moon; an untimely nudge, they murmur slyly, and she would shatter against the rocks.
And so young, so innocent; he spends many a day amusing himself with attempts to lure her out. Sometimes he lets her catch a glimpse of him; a glint of scales in the sun; a gentle spray of water as he dives. Sometimes he brushes past her underwater, skin smooth and warm in a way no fish scales could be.
His sisters sing to her, when it takes their fancy; songs of a palace; translucent and beautiful, shining with mother-of-pearl. Of gardens of coral and anemone, brilliant in the sunlight. Songs of the immeasurable deep.
She hears. She pauses; tilts her head. Shivers. Her limbs relax their strain against the tide, and she begins her long, slow descent. But before she slips under the surface she glances back to shore, where her brother waits for her; watchful, fearful. And then suddenly her body gains new life, splashing and flailing like a fish out of water.
But for him, he thinks, she would not resist their call. The sea would claim her, lovingly, and at last she would drift out to the horizon, free and weightless.
But he always calls her back.