Thread title:
In the Days of Wooden Ships: Great Lakes haze's RP Samples
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Ghosts, Mermaids, Mutineers, and Dubious Angels: Great Lakes haze's RP Samples (DNP)
TALWYN AILIS
Talwyn rose from the echoing vault of the old, deep, sighing ocean. She swam towards the distant silver-green broken mirror of the surface, her cobalt-blue hair floating behind her, her jeweled fish’s tail flashing with each powerful stroke. Though her slender arms were strong, she used them for the most part as stabilizers, or she allowed them to drift at her sides; she was propelled mainly by that pair of broad, spiny tail fins.
She took it in leisurely stages, for from faraway Coral Canyon to the top of the world is a long, cold, exhausting journey, even for an exceptionally strong swimmer (which she was). And even the Children of the Sea have to pause to let the pressure equalize within and without their bodies, lest they shatter like glass, as do the life forms that dwell in the benthic depths when they are caught in some fishing or scientific vessel’s nets and are dragged unwilling to the fatal shallows.
When at last her head broke the light-shot surface of the waves, she threw her wet hair out of her dark eyes and, treading water, looked around to get a fix on her location. The over-arching sky spilled blue and white light over the great disk of the earth as the cloud masses rolled over the sun, turning the sea’s white-capped, slate-blue surface a more leaden blue, and then when they released the Sun, the diamond-hard and brilliant Daystar, the color of the sea returned to sparkling blue-green. She was not far from her desired destination, and that was good, as she was very tired. She swam parallel to the shore for a few miles, northwards, avoiding the riptides, and finally she permitted the roaring surf to carry her in to a deserted beach.
She rested on the wet sand, while the waves rushed up around her and ebbed back out. Each surge lifted the blue hair and swirled it around her head and shoulders, seized hold of the hem of her short dress woven of seaweed leaves and tugged at it urgently, as though to summon her back into the element where she belonged. She lay face up, eyes closed, doing nothing more than breathing. The air of the Upper Earth, laden with a mist of salt water, seethed in and out of her lungs with a strangeness she could not describe in words – that fabled element air, delicious, painful, ethereal. Finally, she slid carefully up the berm, graceful and mobile even when apparently beached like a storm-tossed mackerel. The instant her deeply forked tail touched sand that was not always inundated (and therefore belonged, by ancient compact, to the Land and not to the Sea), it transformed into a pair of human feet. Only the glittering sapphire-blue of her toenails, like the azure nails of her fingers, recalled the jeweled fish scales that were now no more.
In the veins of some of the Mer People, the blood of the ancient race of shape-changers still ran true, or almost so, and these few were not confined to the sea – they could walk the earth just as born earth-folk could do. From her earliest childhood and up into the present time, Talwyn found herself recurringly propelled by her restless body into the upper reaches of the ocean; the human feet and legs that existed in potential within the fish’s tail craved the earth under them, longed to perform the magical ungainly dance of walking. Humans took it for granted, not knowing that this form of locomotion was an amazing thing, a movement out of the realm of fantasy and legend. It was said that the sea-people had come from the Land, long ages ago in the Burning Time, seeking the cool and nourishing element that would save their lives, the sanctuary of the Great Water. But perhaps the cloud-borne winds and the rocky, river-laced valleys of Earth still called to lineages such as Talwyn’s.
The Upper Earth, the land, was a strange place indeed. Its air was as clear as crystal, and sound waves traveled through it with a stunning, vibrating clarity, unlike their muffled progress under the water. Merely to stand upright in the wind, with the sounds caressing the delicate tympanums hidden deep within her shell-like ears, was a joy and an intoxication almost beyond any other. It was worth its price – the way in which gravity weighed down her limbs and dragged at her heart and all the other half-fluid organs of her body. But even this was part of the dance. To move the toppling body upon the rigidly jointed lower limbs, the arms held cautiously out to either side, the fingers spread to let the air waft between them, to stilt along, heels and balls of the feet sinking into the sand, toes gripping – until suddenly, the rhythm was regained, the body remembering exactly how it was done, and it was no trouble at all, a process as fluid as swimming – now that was pleasure.
All the same, it was good she did not have to learn to walk today. This wasn’t her first sojourn in the Upper Earth. Nor was it her first visit to this beach. She pulled her feet under her like a cat and stood up, the wind chill on her wet skin. She pushed her wet hair behind her ears, shook out her dress, and started up the beach, coming finally to a path among the rocks. It led to a flight of iron stairs, and these rusty steps took her to a cliff top, and beyond that was a mown field. A flock of gulls wheeled over and looked down in surprise to see one of the sea folk, so out of her element, walking purposefully towards one of the dwellings of humans, a white house with a red tile roof. Surely she knew that was bound to be a disaster, just as it was a catastrophe for an earth being to try to live in the ocean? Well, it was none of their business. But still, they looked down and called a warning to her. She looked up and spoke to them in her language, which they understood, and they wheeled and departed, not believing her reassurance. But they had no say in the matter, after all.
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