Of Sea and Sky: Part 8

            “You’re silent as stars,” Caspian said, coming up the cliff behind Lani on one evening when fall was very near. The sun clung to the sky, casting its desperate fingers over the water, over Lani, over Caspian.

            “I found it,” she answered, corralling her hair over one shoulder so that it would not whip him in the face when he came near. From within the fold of her voluminous robes, she withdrew a coarsely wrapped object.

            “You found what?”

            “The wish.”

            Caspian took it with fumbling hands, wondering why the feeling behind his sternum felt more like desperation than joy. He had to see it. And then he did. It was a piece of glass.

            “Something of sea and sky,” he murmured, smoothing fingers over it.

            “Made by lightning, smoothed by the ocean.”

            “How is it a wish?” He handed the shining glass back to her.

            “I’ll show you.” Her voice was very sad.

            Lani held up the mirror toward the waning sun, which glinted off the ocean-polished surface to catch the eye of the last of the summer trade boats. There was a series of flashes in return.

            “If I flash back, they’ll come for us.”

            Though she made a move to do just that, Caspian’s hands were in the way.

            “Don’t.” His heart was tapping enthusiastically against his chest, and when he looked at the boat, all he felt was sickly sweet dread.

            “Don’t?”

            “You said we’d wish for the same thing, in the end. All I want is to stay here. With you.”

            Though the muscles of her face wanted to stretch with contentment, Lani held them in check.

            “I’d go with you, if you went,” she clarified. Caspian shook his head, terrified now. Without thinking, desperate, Caspian’s hand darted out to take the glass and throw it into the sea. It gleamed like a falling star as it went.

The End

Of Sea and Sky: Part 6

            “There’s a boat, Lani.”

            She sat in the shallowest water, picking the petals off a flower, the last of the really warm summer days glowing on her skin. One by one, white petals rained into the tide and were dragged away by the hungry sea.

            “There’s a boat.”

            Lani plucked the last petal, held it between two fingers close to her face, studied it. Then she stood, let it drop. A shorter version of her silk-patterned garb clung to her wet thighs.

            “You’re going.”

            “You’re going with me.” There was something so desperate in his tone that Lani closed her eyes toward the sea. She reached out a blind hand and found his poorly shaven face deftly.

            “I’m not. It’s a nice fire, but it isn’t a wish.”

            Caspian’s mouth opened and closed helplessly. He wrung the hem of his white shirt in agitation. Opening her eyes, Lani turned. Keeping her hand on his face and adding another, she stood on her tiptoes. Then she kissed him. She kissed him goodbye.

            “Lani, I can’t just leave you.” Hanging his head as one under enormous weight, he expelled a heavy breath. His fists clenched impotently in her hair.

            She was sad, smiled, made no response. His fists unclenched. His footsteps turned away toward the smoke rising toward the bright blue sky.

Still more to go...

Of Sea and Sky: Part 5

            They didn’t talk about it, pretended it hadn’t happened. But after that day, Caspian began building a signal fire. It was done in secret, furtive movements, in fake bathroom trips and extra supply collecting. In between, Lani was more and more herself, a self that Caspian had never thought to reach. He felt like a sea rat. But Lani might never have found out. Except she did.

            Her face blanched like cinder bone when she saw the pyre. She’d worn the dress, he thought, the first thing he noticed, a short sun-dress thing that bared her long legs. She’d caught her hair up too, using an assortment of island things to hold it--shells and starfish and flowers--and revealing a slim neck. Caspian felt his insides being dragged out to sea. He was a rat, a plague carrying boat rat. Breath coming long and slow like the tide, Lani watched him. The island queen’s face read disdain.

            “You lied.”

            “Lani, I didn’t—“

            Slowly with great dignity, then fast and stumbling like an idiot, shipwrecked boy, she made her escape. Caspian practically leaped over the pile, racing for her. He caught her on the high sand dune where they had first met.

            “Wait!” His eyes were wild, hair crazy. She was poised and sad. The island queen and her savage.

            “You don’t believe me. You think I’m crazy.”

            “No, I don’t. I don’t think—“

            But now Lani’s chest was heaving with the sobs she hadn’t spilled for her lost family or traumatic past. Crumbling, knees in the sand, she stared out at the water and grieved.

            “Lani…” Caspian spread his hands helplessly, looking down at her.

            “Light your fire, Caspian. Go! The sea is salted with bones, and I hope yours join them.” But her voice broke enough to tell him she lied. Caspian’s extended hand on her shoulder was shrugged off. Back at the shack, a flowing robe covered the dress and tea was made for one. Caspian went down to the beach and lit his fire.

Of Sea and Sky: Part 3

            Apparently, making wishes involved a lot of searching for things in the sand. Caspian followed Lani from one end of the island to another, dragging his feet in the sand. She’d explained patiently that what they searched for was something of sea and something of sky that, when mixed together, would yield a wish.

            “Why will this work again?” he asked on the second morning of hunting.

            “Because it is impossible. The universe in a tea cup.” That was all she would say on the subject.

            But as the days past, Caspian found he didn’t mind quite so much. If their task was futile, it was no more futile than any other means of being saved. Besides, Lani looked quite beautiful on the beach, toes in the water, sun on her skin. She looked even more beautiful when he tucked a flower behind her ear, one from the trees on the far side of the island, which she loved.

            “You are so quiet, Lani,” Caspian said one night. They sat on a rocky cliff, a fire behind them and the stars beyond. The ocean churned with a storm approaching. “So quiet all the time.”

            Saying nothing, Lani looked out at the sea. Brow furrowed, she might have been listening to a song there. Her shoulders were bare to the fire glow, her dress a flow of wispy fabric. Raising her hand, she flicked at her face, the tear removed catching fire as it fell to the sand.

The faint scent of jasmine reached Caspian’s nose, made bumps dance down his arms. Capian rose to his feet, grabbing that teary hand as he did. He drew the island queen to her feet.

“Show me,” he said, refusing to allow her hands free. With a sigh of defeat, Lani nodded. And Caspian had been right; she was a dancer.

There's still a few parts to go.

Of Sea and Sky: Part 2

            “So how do we make a wish?” Caspian asked again, almost failing to notice that they had come upon a little sea shack in his desperate single-mindedness. Lani turned at the entrance to the lopsided home, letting the armfuls of flowers she had collected on the way fall to her bare feet.

            “There is a special formula. I’ll teach you, if you like.” Her raised eyebrows were tentative, revealing something sharp and sad behind blue irises.

            “I’d appreciate it,” Caspian replied. Darting forward, he kneeled to collect the flowers she had dropped.

            “No,” she smiled down at him. The silk of her robe brushed against his face, making him light-headed. “Leave them.”

            “Are you sure—“ Lani abandoned him at the threshold, gliding into her dark, two-room house on legs that—revealed through a slit or fold in her many patterned fabrics—might have been a dancer's. Without further protest, Caspian followed, finding as he did that the entire floor of the sea-bent home was covered in similar blooms.

            Lani crossed to a teapot by the rough-cut window. It was a badly beaten thing, warmed by a tiny fire on a makeshift stove. Caspian eyed the strange space that contained a pile of chipped china, a trunk with travel stickers, two wooden chairs, a matching table, and a door that presumably led to a bedroom.

            “Was all this here when you got here?”

            “Most of it,” Lani’s voice had drawn thin.

            “How did you get here?” Curious, he’d moved nearer to her, near enough to see the tension enter her back.

            “How did you?”

            “I thought it would be obvious from the stench of seaweed,” he joked.

            “A shipwreck?”

            “Yeah.” Rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, Caspian accepted a cup of tea with the other. He hardly knew what to make of this strange, distant girl.

            “Are you all alone here?”

            “I am. Do you want to start on the wishes now or later?” Cocking her head to one side, the island girl watched him.

            “Now, I guess.” Together they sat down at the wooden table. Lani wrapped long-fingered hands around her mug, some of the tension leaving her body.

            “What will you use it for?” Caspian asked because he was fresh from society and couldn’t bear the quiet that had fallen between them.

            “The same as you, I suspect.”

            “You aren’t very talkative.”

            “You’re very talkative.”

            Caspian laughed, and because he had not expected to laugh on a lonely island after a shipwreck he laughed again. As the chortles shook his battered body, Lani watched him with the expression of one who is trying to remember a word in their native tongue after long speaking in a foreign one.

Of Sea and Sky: Part 1

She was a queen, a lonely island queen quite solitary on a rocky dune with summer sand grass itching her bare ankles. He was a shipwreck, made of sticks and cinder and seawater, wobbling down the beach with sand in his eyes.

“What are you doing?” he asked the island queen. Her dark hair danced on the wind against the pale blue sky. The queen did not reply.

            “Something of sea, something of sky…” she murmured, bending over to search in the long grasses. When she clutched at her long garments that flowed about her in the same way as her hair, it revealed that she was not a grown woman but a young one. She looked up from beneath that shaggy, dark canopy and caught sight of the young man whom the ocean had spit up.

            “I’m making a wish,” she answered. There was something of ash in her voice, like perhaps she too had been a shipwreck once.

            “And how does one make a wish?” the boy asked.

            The queen squinted at him with surprising dark blue eyes that did not belong with her tan skin and dark hair. Standing straight again, the top of her head only came to his chin, but she seemed far more imposing than her stature suggested.

            “You could use one too,” she decided. The girl brushed past him in a wind of jasmine and firewood.

            “I’m Caspian,” he called, stumbling in the sand to follow her.  Wind catching at her clothing, the girl, who was a stark whirl of colors against the pale landscape, turned.

            “I’m Lani,” she answered, and a smile began to curl the edges of her mouth. A shake of her head had her turning again and Caspian struggling to follow in the fine, shifting sand.

Working Title. Let me know what you think!

The Small People

Started out being inspired by the idea that stars are basically just ghosts.

Unedited, random piece. I like writing in fairy-tale-esque verse.

The sun it cried a bright flame

and with its breath it said,

“This earth, it turns so slowly.

They don’t know that they are dead.”

And he could spin them faster

“I won’t,” his promise tragic.

And on and on he watched them,

and always they were static.

On Earth, they had no knowledge

of pain as bright as this:

the sun the one thing living,

his fire curled in fists.

***

The stars were ghosts of living,

they birthed by death’s bright eye.

They watched the people spinning

and played their part to die.

They knew the mortals’ true flaw

unable to see truth,

the date they should be fighting

mortal claw and human tooth.

From Earth, they knew not sadness

of watching dead men’s lives,

though every night they saw it:

their fate inside the sky.

***

And Earth it cradled softly

its children bright and dying,

a beauty great and horrid

like sun and stars combining.

The world, it spun so slowly.

Time is a mortal thing

that keeps the people blinded

in constant wandering.

And if they spun it faster

they’d fly off in the sky

and shake this curse of living,

the final day to die.

***

The sky, it held them gently.

The universe expanded.

The people lived so small-y

like human life demanded.

The world, it let them go on.

The sun, it cried their fate.

Star-ghosts illuminated

their expiration date.

The mortals nodded brightly;

they felt the sun’s bright ray,

the tears that flew in star dust,

and still, on Earth, they stayed.