Hungry… Hungry.. Hungry… The words are like a mantra spoken in some distant land. Or perhaps a warning, chanted by all the lost souls who had been drawn too far to sea and who had been tricked by her sweet words and a place where the sticky sweet salt of her touch would blend with the wicked bitter salt tears they cried and for a moment could feel whole. Yes, perhaps that, a warning spoken so much like an invitation that in my addled brain it may almost have seemed like a grand idea. A shaking breath filled my bodice as my audits became aware of a pounding that came in rhythm with the lapping of the shore, something thick and powerful. As it came closer it became more difficult to discern if it was not just the sea itself coming to bring me in while I dawdled and hummed and hawed and debated on if I belonged to her icy depths.
Not just yet, not yet… Gaia has plans for you, even if it is just more darkness and uncertainty. No… The sea shall not have you today.
And then she is there, as if by some force of the universe having ripped its way through the planes of existence, she is there. This creature adorned with trinkets of life and death, with a pelt as black and churning as the ocean struck through with light that I swear pulsed with an aliveness, with creation. She was both life and death, I was sure. No mortal flesh could speak with that lyrical tone, no mortal blood could welcome the sea with such open arms. Therefore, she was more than mortal, I was sure. And Gaia have me, that light... she was the cosmos, breaking and becoming, barely contained in this flesh that seemed crafted of the rolling sea and sands and beckoned me.
Hungry… Starving… Keening and wanting. That is the sea. She is lust, and deceit, and grief and desire. She is the force of destruction and the will of creation, measured only in natural disasters and miracles. And this frame before me, this equine who surely must be my mind forcing me to understand the enormity of her being… She is her.
In all my meditations, I had wondered what a god would look like. Gaia had always seemed like she may be a warm golden green, like a summer breeze. But if that is so, then what could this achingly beautiful creature hold dominion over? Blackness, sorrow, the hunger of the hunt and the lustful purring of the damned… Yes, perhaps that. If Gaia was the Earth Mother then the figure before me could only be the product of the universe itself. I could not stop my eyes from roaming her pelt with a hunger that I rarely indulged in.
My daggers shifted beneath me as the tide moved away and I moved with it, out to sea, towards her. It was as if my flesh missed the sting of her icy grip and begged for more, like a whipping boy who had come to need the touch of his master’s lash and equated it with his love. I wanted to fall into that flesh with its crackling invitation, it’s strange markings that pulled me closer, beckoning with some curious knowledge. My pelt shuddered with the breeze, my banner flicking behind me as if it might try to wake me from this dream.
After all, every time I had thought I might imagine a god had been in a dream. A stasis of some kind, with mantras and herbs and pleading. Mayhaps I had fallen asleep on the shore and the pull that I felt was the tide lulling me in while I rested my eyes. But I knew better, looking at her. This could be no dream, and no misguided Plane’s Walk, because the muscle under her skin twitched and moved and breathed and I could sense the aliveness in it. Or whatever it is that is beyond aliveness. Something alien, but pure and unknown but drawing on the need for something familiar.
Perhaps I had given leave of my senses to come here and to know the ocean. But if that had been my quest, then it would be impolite to turn my back on her. I licked my lips again, parting them and taking in the smell of the sea and all it could give me and filing the sensation into my memories so that if I never had the chance to again I might still recall the taste of her on my tongue.
”You and her are one and the same…” I had hoped that my voice would carry more weight but the words came out like the breath of a lover between kisses. And perhaps that is what I was, a virgin lover to the sea, ravaged by her strength and beauty.
I'll Take a Deep Deep Breath
but I'll come back to haunt you if I drown
but I'll come back to haunt you if I drown
« r » || @Leto
