My ocean has a heartbeat.
It’s there in every white-froth crest, in every shark snarl, in the thunder bowing low over the sea.
thump, thump, thump, or maybe it’s lub, dub, lub, dub.
In my ears it echoes in the same way the tide echoes in the hollows of my bones where marrow should be. With every step, every briney breath, every challenging mirror cry of my soul, I hear that heartbeat. Somewhere beyond this dreaming sea of mine I know-- I know-- that my sister is tangled with me in our bed awashed in silk and chainmail with our wolves curled around us like roots a seedpod.
Somewhere I know I am not alone.
But here I am the only monster on the shoreline. My horn is the only crown taunting the straight line of the horizon with a whistling song. I am brightness in the dark-tide, pearl in the ink and gloom of the night, moon in the dark places empty of stars.
And I do not run through the solitude like a wolf looking for a pack.
I walk.
Step after step, slow as a tide first coming to land, my form never quickens and hungers for a place where the darkness might cut open into the light. It is not the light, or the horizon, I hunger for in this ink and gloam.
The sea is a mile of cool-pearl kisses against my belly as I wade into the waves. It curls mother-gentle around my hocks and my knees. It pulls at me like I am nothing more than sand, or dead and pale shell, or driftwood.
And I follow it. Until the sea aches against the pulse below my cheek-- as if it might swallow the heartbeat I have given it in this dream of mine. As if it is jealous that I still fill it to bloating with a roar that is not its own.
Somewhere a drum starts to beat, and a mare starts to scream, and a fire starts to smolder. I close my eyes. Because when I open then, I know, that I will be standing belly deep in a sea of bodies and it’ll be a blood-tide curling around my knees.
I know this is how it starts. This is how it always starts.
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