She swam with the sea until it branched off into a river and wended its way deep into the island. Though Sereia had not been here at the island’s birth, she heard tales from her sister. Great tales of terrible happenings and fickle lands that changed in a breath. The world twisted and turned and became something so utterly, different. Then time stood still. When it awoke from its stupor it raged in chaos and catastrophe.
She swims slowly, deeply. She explores where the island hides its secrets, where bodies lie submerged in great chiasmic openings now filled with earth and water. Her breath grows shallow as she watches bubbles rise and wonders of their souls.
The kelpie goes until the river runs dry and the land rises up to meet her. Slowly the girl emerges from the water, slim and elegant. She walks as if she is not a girl born in the deep ocean, but one born with solid ground beneath her limbs and air in her lungs. She follows the deep gouging river bed and wonders why the water has stopped. It hangs back behind her as if it dare go no further. Ahead a blossom tree leans out over the empty river bed. Its petals are crimson and they fall continuously from the tree’s slim arms. The blossoms gather in the river bed and flow on like water, continuing along the way of the gorge. Sereia steps beneath the fountain of petals, tumbling down from the tree. Petals line her spine as water droplets might have.
Curious, buoyed on, Sereia follows this strange petal river. Blossoms roll over blossoms gathering in number from the giving trees that pour their lives into the rippling river below. They almost carry her, these strange petals. They pick up speed toward the edge of a cliff and Sereia swims swift and fast toward the bank. She clambers out just as the petals stream over the edge. They tumble and drift, swirl and float their way down to the pool of petals below. Sereia watches from above, she sees the grasses around the blossom pool and the flowers that pour water as if they were fountains.
What strange world is this?
A figure moves below and Sereia watches them, “Is that’, she asks, “a water flower beside you?”
@
dark and deep
I offer you
eternal sleep.
~
