First published in Heart-Bytes for the Flash fiction competition.
I sat in
silence. The wind grazed my hair and honoured my nostrils with the stench of
the seven seas. There were others too, who were seated unmoved in a spell of
inactivity sharing silence with me. The sky filled with dark smoke merged
easily with the stagnant liquid of the sea, indistinguishable in colour they
united and held their bond. An uneasy sight for others, but I begged to differ.
Out of the two,
the one that sat away from me kept dropping rocks into the murky water. The object
hit the water, no ripples formed and sunk quietly into darkness. Life was
something similar, in the end all that awaited one was darkness. There was
nothing more to it, we inhabitants of light in our quest to find brighter
lights move into darkness.
The stranger turned
her neck a few degrees bringing me into her field of vision.
“Is it always
like this?”
“It gets
darker”
I could tell my
reply was quick to bring in anguish to her heart.
“It wasn’t
always like this!”
“There were
better times?”
“Times where
one could sea through the water”
“Just the like
in textbooks”
“Something like
that”
She shifted her
gaze and so did I. Her friend however did not bother to break the silence.
Content with the murky water he sat there. The clouds grew darker; the source
could be seen now. The colossal vessel that floated like the fishes that lost
interest in swimming now came into view. Leaving a trail of blacker black, it
ordered fishes to rise up and show respect. The fishes rose and the girl’s
heart sank.
A few
silhouettes scrambled onboard. I remained still, while one shrieked and the
other dropped another rock. A rock added to the grave of blue, maybe it fell on
Neptune ’s tomb. I did not know, I didn’t want
to know.
The beast
leaked black, sons and daughters of Neptune
rose in awe. I still remained unmoved but the girl got up and stood for a
while. She motioned towards the edge that separated wet from dry and emptied her
bottle of water. The clear liquid vanished quickly unable to fight off the evil
that lurked in every corner of its new home.
She turned towards me and said “May be that
will help”
************
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