A Secret Language of Seashells and Glass

by lucidscreamer

Shipwrecked after his uncle tried to kill him, Yami finds himself alone on a deserted island. But he may not be as alone as he thinks, as mysterious messages appear on the beach along with gifts and food. Yami slowly falls in love with his secret admirer through the language they create together, a language of seashells and glass. Mermaid AU (Not a fusion or xover.)

7. Chapter 7

(7)

Identical days trudge past. Blue ocean, bluer sky. Rhythmic waves, fish, clouds, birds. Sand, palm trees. Coconuts.

Yami counts the days in sunsets.

He collects detritus from the beach: tins to store water, to cook, and bits to add to his shelter.

He watches the empty horizon and hopes for rescue.

One day, he finds a book with salt-encrusted pages and lays it to dry by the fire. The book is unreadable, but he stares at the illustrations: mermaids luring sailors to their watery deaths with seductive, siren songs.

At night, he dreams of unearthly music murmuring across the waves.

o0o

Night trails after night, and day stalks after day, inevitable as the ceaseless motion of the waves or the burning epiphany of the sun. The unburdened sea stretches out, a watery road to nowhere, endless blue ocean melding with infinite blue sky until he almost seems encased in a vast bubble. He grounds himself with the shifting grit of the sand beneath his bare feet, and the ghostly touch of the wind running it's fingers through his hair. He dives beneath the clear waters of the lagoon, wary eyes open for sharks, following the darting rainbows of tropical fish. On the sea-floor, ragged and forlorn, like castles snared by the sea and drowned, coral ramparts guard his passage.

Yami's eyes are ever drawn to the sea, seeking hints of motion among the waves beyond his placid lagoon. Each day marches in monotony; pitiless sun and heat, flat-blue sea and sky bleeding together in the horizon, palms swaying in the trade-winds that ruffle the azure water. The heat is narcotic, blurring the edges of the days. At night, beyond the light of his signal fires, he stares at the stars and traces new constellations in the sky. He doesn't know how he can be so far south as to render them unrecognizable, but the stars are strange and the great fins he sometimes sees from the corner of his eye are twilight shades of blue-purple-gray, so the dolphins here are stranger still.

The swift twilight finds him huddled in his shelter, contemplating the glass-still lagoon. The moon's reflection is a ghost in the water, haunting him with heavy visions - a ghost himself, dead at his uncle's whim, reflected in silver-chalice waters. The warm caress of the wind brings the sound of a flute or pipe, trilling soft as whispers over the waves; not music, but the soul of music, drifting up the lonely beach to haunt him.