Prompt #15: Silence
Rating: PG
"There is no greater sorrow than to recall, in misery, the time when we were happy." – Dante
There were no such things as happy endings. She knew this because knives carved ribbons of her feet, and it seemed the bloody shreds would heal in the mid-air between each step... but then her foot would touch the tile again and the process would repeat over and over and over. Had she her tongue she might have screamed, but what good would that have done? They would find no blood in her slippers, or scars etched to her skin.
The silk ribbons and frothy dress fluttered about her as she moved but she felt like an imposter in her finery, with her heavy, cumbersome body, her feet tearing and her neck aching from the weight of her hair. Once, a lifetime ago, the strands had floated about her like a great mahogany shawl, but she soon learned that the yards and yards of it were less forgiving on Land.
When she had woken in a human bed to find her tail cleaved in two, she felt relief to the pit of her stomach. What felt like ragged stumps was indeed skin smooth and beautiful to the touch, just as promised, but the witch had promised more.
She learned to sit at a table. She learned to hold the silver and eat when told. She learned to recognise their halting speech and that she would be whipped if a man saw her unclothed. She learned to walk, and dance in circles and circles. Presented to the court as the prince's odd new pet, she would not escape the cotillions, the balls, the state dinners or garden parties or foreign excursions or royal banquets, and she bled exquisitely through them all.
He would break into smile when she danced, and so she danced, his own little mute fool swathed in lace, twirling like a toy in a box. They must have thought her stupid, or grotesque, but even then, she thought perhaps. If the prince would but spend some more time with me, he would- What? Know how much she loved him? He liked to talk about the strange girl who held his heart, and not much else. The one with the glorious brunet mane and eyes like the green of the sea, the soft hands that brushed the sand from his cheek, and most of all her siren's tongue and the voice that beckoned him to Paradise.
And every time, her fingernails would dig white crescents into her palms and she would scream look at me look at me LOOK AT ME but her siren's tongue had been cut and there was not a sound to be heard. And he would turn from gazing out over the sea and smile and touch the tip of her nose with the top of his finger, and call her his silent secret-keeper.
She learned that one could still taste without a tongue, and that tears were salty, and that night, she crept down to the shore and plunged her toes into the sand and watched the waves curl around her ankles like fingers of smoke. She wanted to open her eyes back in her old life to find that this had all been some bizarre dream. A dream about some Man she didn't know, and an extraordinary Land-lust for a place that existed in paintings and was filled with broken sculptures and mirrors gilt in gold and curious implements with made-up uses and made-up names. She thought of home. Her sisters. Her salty tears dropped into the salty sea. She felt all her naivety and idiocy wash out of her, carried away by the swirling water, and she cried for a time long past.
She thought of the beginning, him standing at the bow of his ship, his russet head unbound and the wind pulling his cloak this way and that, the moment when she saw his face and forgot she was a mermaid. It was a lifetime ago. Now she was here, and there was nothing left. Silver was for eating and dresses were for dress-up and satin slippers were red the colour of blood. The Land had dried her clean, white, like chalk and bones, through and through. She thought of his eyes looking at her and never ever seeing her. His lips formed the strange word that was not her name. The witch had held her end to every last word, and she screamed and screamed and screamed across the sea and not a sound came out.
Author's note
First of all, thank you all so much for the reviews! They really do make my day(s).
Second of all, I realise everyone's perception of our favourite couples will be different, and the nuances of their relationships will vary from reader to reader. Because of the continued vagueness of these drabbles/vignettes – particularly when I don't specifically mention hair colour or eye colour or names for that matter – I'm taking a page from Debussy's book, and will list the pairing and, if necessary, minor plot details at the end. You can choose to have these facts in mind when you read the chapter, to decrease confusion, or you can read the chapter, get a feel for the characters and the situation, and see if your impressions were the same as mine.
As always, let me know!
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Nephrite/Mako: In this, the mermaid grieves for the future she'd dreamed of and sacrificed for, but is no longer hers.