Two Maidens. By Ruby Fire

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She was not bred or born of this place. This land and this ocean where not native to her but she had grown up entwined in the vibrant life that the islands produced.

She laughed when she thought of that phrase. It brought to mind a picture of a sleeping young girl covered with twisting, coiling tropical vines covered in beautiful but poisonous.

And that morbid image intrigued Elizabeth. In her imagination, she imagined how many men would try to reach the beautiful girl, enthralled by her, and they would fight off the entire jungle to reach this girl. They would have to touch this beauty. And the second they kissed the sleeping girl surrounded by beautiful but deadly flowers, they would die, killed by a different kind of deadly flower.

Elizabeth would open her eyes and see the real jungle but it was so far off. She felt the need to stretch her fingers out to touch those. She wanted to stretch over her balcony to reach, even it meant maybe she would fall to her doom.

But she would just sit there patiently on her balcony and observe the world of which she could see, hear, and smell but rarely be allowed to enter.

Eventually, she turned her eyes from the jungle to the ocean. Yes, that was much better.

Water was cool and so easy to move through. It would take her all over the world because water could conquer land and flow wherever it pleased. And she would be entwined with it. Yes, it would cover her and embrace more tightly than any jungle plant or even the mist of the forest itself.

When she was younger, her father had let her swim. She loved the feeling of being completely embraced. It pushed softly against her and surrounded her more than any lover could. And every day, she swam further and further away from shore.

One day, she went too far. She'd gone so far out into the bay that her muscles began to cramp up. She could not fight the sea's real currents, those that toss and drive ships along its surface. She bobbed just barely above the water's surface and sometimes she sunk underneath only to summon up enough strength to swim upward to grab a mouthful of air.

The commodore rescued her.

Her father forbade her to swim in the ocean again.

As she sat before the fire in her father's grand house, she stared into the flames and did not see the red and orange and black but the green, blue, and gray of the sea.

Her father said proper ladies did not need how to swim. He said that it was dangerous. He said that he didn't want any young men seeing her in her underclothes since she was coming of age and what not. He blushed when he told her the reasons.

The maids dried her hair, stiff and sticky as twine, and worried about if she caught "the death of her" as so many people do when child so much as get water splashed upon their feet.

Underneath al that care, Elizabeth did not see the ocean as dangerous. It - no, she swallowed ships and sailors and pirates because she was alone and needed company. The ocean needed love, not fear. She wanted the love that she received when she was revered as a goddess.

And, now, many years later, Elizabeth stood on the balcony, a few arms length from Will. She stared across the bay. She stared at the water.

She smiled to herself.

You and I are two maidens, my goddess of freedom.

And as she fell toward the water, she felt the freedom of the air and when she hit the water, she felt the freedom of blackness.

Her body smiled as it sunk below the water. The goddess now had her sacrifice out of love.

Two maidens, entwined for forever.