That moment, when my ship broke apart, when I was thrown about by the waves, was an almost joyous one. Death held no more fear for me, and I let myself float.
The first of my miracles was the sandy island which received me. I arrived with nothing more than a few bumps and a bellyful of sea water to show for my trials. I vomited, and then I slept again. I hadn't the strength yet to move up from the shore, and so I remained in the sun until it nearly set, until the tide rolled in over my ankles. There was a nip at my heels - teeth from the ocean. I jumped to my feet and ran as much as my sapped body allowed.
When the morning came again, I looked around. Some small trees for shade, a mile of sand, and a wide, weary silence. I heard neither the burble of running water nor the bark of animals. My lips flaked like parchment. I thirsted.
Without a knife to carve my story in the trees, I wrote instead with my finger in the sands by the beach. "Once upon a time," I began. I had no other task to occupy my mind, and so I wrote all that day. The tide came in. The water washed over my toes, and again I felt the clicking teeth on my skin. I retreated to the tree line and watched the water overrun the sand. My story had been dev
Now for the second of my miracles - I began to sweat. Understand I had taken no water that day, and I soon expected to die of dehydration. But I swear to you, that after the voracious wave washed my story away, my belly filled. My lips were smooth, and my tongue was wet. I felt the thirst no more.
I survived like this for days, weeks. Every day, from sunrise to high tide, I wrote in the sand. Nursery rhyme and fairy tales, at first, but these often left me hungry still at the end of my day. I tried my hand at elegant fictions, like the ones I'd read in my youth - stories of hard men with guns and the women who lied to them. These I could never complete satisfactorily, and I slept those nights feeling bloated and uncomfortable, as though I had eaten too many sweets. At no point did I feel as satiated as I had that first night. I believed the ocean craved truth, and so I began to write the only true stories I knew. I wrote stories of my own life.
I started with the story of my birth, as well as I could remember it from what my mother told me. From there I moved on to my early friends at school, the time we moved when my sister was born, my first stitches. Months passed, and I continued to write of my divorces, the employers who sacked me, and my little girl, whom I had not seen in five years. I wrote all of these, and every night the ocean came and swept my stories away, leaving me full, but always just a little thinner. As I gave to the ocean of my history, I felt that I was giving away pieces of myself.
And, indeed, I woke one morning with nothing left to write. At first, there was the panic that comes from the inevitability of starvation - had I truly written everything there was to say about myself? Had I given everything I was to the sea, only for it to continually devour more? Was I so insubstantial?
In truth, these feelings passed surprisingly quickly. My thoughts turned away from the tragedy of death and towards... I don't know. Can one claim "vengeance" against an impartial force of nature?
Tapped of my stories, I spent my last day lying on the beach, waiting for the nipping waves to finally devour me whole. Since the ocean had so gladly devoured everything inside of me, I decided to let it have my outsides as well. And so, when night fell, and the waves came again, I let them bite at my feet, my legs, my chest and head, until I had completely washed away.
Lotta stories about death recently. Guess I was just feeling a bit morbid.
I have a lot of fun working with textures and shading while doodling. Variety in technique helps a picture feel more alive, so I try really hard to incorporate such variety - when I don't get impatient.
No comments:
Post a Comment