~Prologue~ It was a cloudy thing to remember anything else but being below the waves. Darkness impenetrable except one thin white line was a mere smile in the murk and sudden jerking motion. To smell and taste what it is to see as all these senses emerged in the black waters. A flush of red heat and spilling blood to her happy smile with teeth to lick as the sharper point of crafted bone spear impaled the no longer silver fish. One sense turning another as for all that sudden roar could mark in a single moment to her holding breath and the spark within the bulbous orbs went dim in this seemingly lightless world below the surge. To remember the clouds above was to remember the mirroring sky and this endless sea. Two bodied oceans of air upon waters deep and still the wonder of what kept those currents separate was all in her climbing mind as the female sprung up through the darkness. Such light never found a place below the superficial covering as she darted through the gray white heat and finally up to drag her kill to the surface. This was only to draw breath as physically her bluish black eyes shed no water to absorb the early morning’s coming heat. A veil below the mixing planets, stars still holding onto the crackling night sky as the usual burning orb did not come this day. No orange or heated bellows to red and somehow her disappointment was one of relief to feel this oddness permeated set of grays. Heavy clouds and the threat of a coming storm told the girl, Darle that is if a name could voice her wordless dialect for the day’s hunt was over before it had a chance to begin. She rubbed her black silken hand over her nearly bald head for something as hair would only grow from being to this cruel side of the mirror. Something lost in the surface as her remarkable face smiled once more of those ever white and jagged teeth. Spines showing how truly happy the girl was to have grown this rough stubble and it was something her mother would more than scold to have felt it on her daughter’s head. It was all lost in the silken light below the coming storm fronts as heat flashed lighting traced Darle’s leaving. Faster than the scattering schools of fish for all enormous and longer than her mere five foot body that swam back toward the safety of the cove. A million promises bathing these blacker forms as her long tail beat faster with each flash. Why bother to care what her mother would think of these wondrous bristles and she smiled again to feel them with her webbed digits. Her spear trailing behind in the wake of a single catch and no regret was given for this gift as she sped for her rock cove. This temporary set of living quarters as caves and the outer cropping rocks were rather a lucky find where the families gathered for the spawn. No mystery of this creature who was more comfortable under the surging waves and wonder of the storm but Darle had to keep track of her younger sister, Nje as their mother Damje was here with the other elders to try and give birth once more. One pure note in the sound of the water dripping back to a calmer surface and Darle pulled up to sit on the black rocks of the inner cove. One with patience as her mother’s hard breathing and harder glare for her daughter’s later return was more for the girl’s sprouting head. This safe perch below the waves felt more a cage to Darle as she started back half daring and nervously rubbing the stubble. Her mother’s eyes were infamous if not cruel for they alone of the elder’s beauty had pulled men into the sea from their safe boats and the highest lookout to the rowdiest of sailors fell below and dived into the death cold seas as to swim any such deliverance. Not even that pitched note from Damje’s pursed mouth was ever needed for her daughters or those sailors to give listen. The smooth pitch rolls of that slender face could say all it took to deliver just that discord and Darle was alone and would regret those times above the waves. So true to dark and impure reaching light as Darle’s head turned round fast and away to somber as she sat with her little sisters for the girls would see another into the family this night. Seeing her mother’s eyes burn back into the stubborn girl was enough to punish as Darle gave Nje her single fish. Both girls looking to their mother as Nje would gladly give this catch for the strength their mother needed but Damje shook her head as for the little one to eat. There was no villain in the little one’s selfish chewing and she bit in and ripped the long fish apart, head first as it was the best bit in her familiar smile which all three females held in common among the other countless other black shapes. So many squirming and the clamor to ease Damje as the eight other mothers, all pregnant and with their many daughters held cycle under this moon for the great birth. It was now or never and this night for those fortunate would have their infants born alive for the wait to see would find some unlucky. Here they looked like neither a fish nor woman be as some odd mixture out of the familiar waters and this storm for off the horizon it had been stirring for a long time as they felt into the small of this cove and the islands above as best to serve purpose. It was an uneasy division down of that dark and coolness of the caves and the light did split the very rock over ages lost with this sound emerging from the mothers’ mouths. One succinct to an ancient burning cry like when they might have walked on two feet broken on the smooth black pebbled shore. The sound at first a scream for that like a whale or porpoise screeching only to settle down in the rattled hum as in these mouths all chortling for the rocks rattle in reverberation. Darle felt it calling her to join and all the other unpregnant females joined to sing back into that dark river and traverse the expanse. She and even little Nje added their softer sounds to the pulse for as swift as the curl in their long tails split and shook to turn up under the navel swimming open to such call. Here only the mothers went wide and the lives within came to a head. A canyon of layered rock was to flesh splattering in this splitting sense of softness within going back into the womb and podded stomachs. Damje asked of her daughters to join and follow deeper in to deliver the life from that hardened hold and Darle with Nje crying to beg of that great spirit called the caves and rocks back of the blackest of waters to let this life be free. A path ever back and across the boundary for rolling waters and time as each note resonated from the soft fatty nodes and the mothers’ foreheads. There was no dispute for this or nature who could be like their mother so hideous as kind and the crueler grasp within let their children all fall free on this smoothed shore. No more a dream as that path from their hold back into the fabric of black curling waves and the storm outside raged and smashed the water and lands around. Both dream and path hewn in half as only three of the babies began to cry louder to the calling as the five other families’ disappointment gave into the sound for the shapes and life cycle was complete. The others small and deformed were left to the gathering and wailing women. The mothers with their fins and holes back to ease as the afterbirth parted next and with no remorse they all sang and moved on to crowd the living and left the mess to wash away as the new higher cries molded the mothers to the new children. An answer as Darle looked to her mothers and they on the little sisters begging and squealing for them to come and the three little answers cried and left the dead shapes behind of this black stone expanse. A cold stone shared of no breath and the florescence came less difficult to see even in the shedding light as none did touch the little forms until one gave its reply. Three more layers of crumbling rock above and around as all their heads cried and laid waste to this fragile cove though it still would outlast the storm above. Inside and out was a cry rippling to tear down the core and a trickle of that flood swirled between the black rains and coming of the call inside. Damje shook her head once more to little Nje who startled and pulled at the infants arm but to this Darle joined with her incredulous look yet finally the fourth child opened its eyes wide. No answer even as Damje rose above all the others tall and asked her own child to respond. Only white bulbous eyes as surely the infant was as well blind and nothing sounded as all grew still to hear her voice but Damje knew first as all others did of why it had not responded. Its tiny hand holding Nje’s defiant touch as she fiddle with the odd growth underneath as a flipper below its belly oddly and all but she knew what a male was. The sound empty as the other healthy babes suckled and fed and cooed with the mothers and their call complete into loving arms but Damje growled and left her own and gave no notice as if this mutant was stillborn. A rough groan in this ‘boy’ as Nje lifted it up and mocked the others not quite able to cradle it as the thing hung from her tiny grabbing arms. Darle’s sadness for her sister as Nje was only seven moons herself did nothing as they darted back to their mother for some sort of reassurance as it was surely unfortunate. Nje dragging and maiming the child more as it groaned and she finally dropped it hard in frustration to follow her sister and with a stern glance from Darle as she took the child up firmly. Nje satisfied with a fanged grin for the chubby bundle’s grief as surely she understand the purpose of leaving it with the dead lumps and she left her sister alone slithering off behind their mother. The angry cry of this beast was discordant and the females looked back on Darle who now only thought of that river which loomed out in the darkness of the open ocean. A deeper choice to carry it away as the infant growled and hummed to be fed and the others just looked away. Back into the shallow pools as below the spray Darle took the unborn child and made her way into a single cavity of the black holding stone wherein it stopped its noise when Darle put it to her empty breast. The boy biting and gnawing as it balanced to the bend of his sister’s long tail and it funnily said, “Goo,” out of both its mouth and ill formed gills. To gauge Darle’s feelings here was somewhere between impossible for joy and one of sheer rage in anger as males were seldom ever useful enough to be kept. It would be like keeping one of those horrible, hairy sailors which were good for only one or two things and Darle was not at all hungry. She stuck her long tongue out and curled it down on the gurgling thing’s face and it most definitely would not fit her petite mouth whole but to leave it here, she wondered. There was never any real choice in this ebony landscape and as it was the dream to the sea and the little bastard only fit in her cradling arms. Not even death quite fit its ugly little smile yet still Darle cradled it as if to keep the thing ignorantly. She took what was left of the gnawed on fish guts and pushed them down the boy’s curling mouth as at first was met with a curdling cry but the cold blood found some source and the child chewed hard and violently to get more. The blood being their milk black as the skin to their bone would feed him. Darle did not even really care as the waters were calling for to stay here she rubbed her foolish stubble fingering those sharper studs and all gave into the whirling of her head. She wanted only for this to grow long as the kelp forests below the ragged black seaweed shawls. A thing to be beyond was to any daggered look from her mother’s good reason. The silver fish innards sucked dry as the boy devoured the rest and began to chew and lick his sister’s sharper fingertips. A binding chain was to hold this child and she no longer could afford to linger as with little effort she let him go back to the cold stone of that cave. Darle held as much care now as her mother had and to have bothered to end its suffering didn’t even wonder as the flesh began to growl and flip aimless of that cold stone. One last look for ambivalence and a feel for that hair as she so wanted more, Darle left the crying thing sliding tail first back into the deeper waters. No faith or helpless beast as a useless child held an edge between the storm and that island as it would fade fast in the cold and hunger that swam as she was hard to catch up with her leaving pod. A spreading sense for her worried forehead but all held to vanish with the land and skies swooning above as her cry was answered in the long pushed out sound of the others ahead and all below. A place where no light or spear could ever penetrate in the girl’s dreaming mind as that abyss of the deeper trench was far better a thing in understanding these brides of the earth. What loomed around them was nothing compared to the life in those depths where no man breached as they floppily swam away. All the feminine sway sprayed to carry their born as three more of the larger pod was enough newborns this moon that lasted longer than the darker reason of a year and so many more. The river always would run further down and they moved to join the next set of sisters and many, many others as before winter would find them all reunited to the northern waters of this wide world. An ebb and floe to rejoin that sound that was life in the deeper cold waters as even little Nje understood as Darle took her hand and pulled her behind filled of pride of the mothers. © 2013 Standard Copyright License, John Lamphere. All rights reserved.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 10:58:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015