His eyes were the color of the ocean that raged inside of
him. It crashed against the sheer rock cliffs that guarded his heart. The ocean
raged and tormented and swirled and laughed and never calmed. She saw all this
and smiled. She didn’t know why she smiled. His eyes weren’t quite sapphires
and they weren’t quite aquamarine or tanzanite. They were his and only his.
They grew dark or light as the ocean allowed.
She swam in the oceans for far too long, years perhaps. Her
body was raked over jagged rock, scraped, crushed, raw yet she stayed. She
clung to the rock face of his heart. The waves would rip her off and she’d
climb again over and over. Her fingers and toes became long spiny claws and
slowly the waves were unable to rip her down. But the battle had changed her.
She became black and bitter and defiant. She was a sea urchin, a rock urchin.
She was stuck forever in her spot on the rock cliffs unable to climb, unable to
fall. She was prickly and poisonous and even the ocean stopped paying attention
to her. Eventually he stopped paying attention to her and he smiled.
If the rock walls ever came down if the wild ocean every won
she would be forgotten. She would wash up a fossil, a relic, centuries later on
the inviting sandy beaches of his heart. The ocean would toss her carcass in
play and it would laugh.
Slowly the sea urchin began to climb. Moving an inch every
so often. Slow enough the ocean never noticed. Slow enough he never noticed. Over time, over much time, she reached the
precipice. The sunlight penetrated her spines. Warmed her being and slowly she
felt herself emerge. Her shell cracked her spikes turned back into fingers and
toes. She had limbs and hair and breasts and in front of her was a vast desert.
A barren wasteland of sun and dust, petrified stone and bleached skulls.
When she got to her feet, the ocean crashed high and hard
and loud against the rocks, trying to reach her, trying to pull her back down.
The ground beneath her feet shuddered and the wind blew hot and fast. The sand
ripping at her face. She began to run as she ran the whole place shook. The
chunk of cliff where she was standing previously cracked and fell into the
furious sea. She ran until the land stopped quivering and her feet began to
bleed.
The sun, the heat, the sand, the dry started to consume her.
She felt her flesh grow leathery. She could only run in short bursts now along
the hot barren wasteland. Unsure if the direction she was going was the right
one. She could no longer see the ocean and the sun was eternal. There was no
night. There was no break from the heat. Where she once thought she would drown
in the ocean of his soul she now though his heart would consume every bit of
moisture. She would crumble to dust and blow away with the wind. The wind would
toss her back out into the ocean. Her hands and toes once again turned to claws
and her skin became the color of the desert. It was all reflected in her brown
scales and long tail as she scurried along the fissured surface. She began to
forget anything other than to dig and scurry long the splintered, dusty shell
of earth. She became lost in the blinding sun.
Her tongue flicked at her eyes, moistened them. She scurried
in quick bursts, taking deep breaths in through her nose. Had she been lost for
years or days as the sun beat down? There in the distance her heart thumped
quick in her chest. She zipped from
under a bleached stone to the shade of a petrified lizard. It was a molehill. She felt her senses come
back to her as the rain started to fall and she ran, rejuvenated, to the
mountain. A storm raged ripping up the dead dust and hurling it into the dark
clouds. The ground became mud and she no longer had claws and her tail fell off
with a painful snap. She was upright and laughed at the storm. He clutched his
chest coughing.
The mountain loomed menacing and vile and dangerous. She
sneered. Everything shook violently and compulsively and angrily. She could
hear the ocean again and the whispers of the sand in the wind. She could hear
the venom in their tongues.
She climbed. She climbed with passion and enthusiasm. She
climbed with love and purpose. It kept her going until the cold stole the
breath from her lungs. She knew she was destined to drown in the ocean and
crumble to dust in the desert but now it was certain she would freeze for his
heart. Yet she moved. Crawling and she felt her hair grow long. Her hands and
feet became stumps hardened to hooves. On all fours, her ears grew long and
curled back on themselves and she traveled up the mountain. It was endless
night. It was brutal and cold. Her breath froze and her soul was forgotten. For
a while, she meandered content with the fact that movement kept her warm. She
wandered. Until the night began to laugh at her. The snow began to taunt her.
She ran and rammed full force into the mountain repeatedly. Her anger hot and
palpable. Eventually the mountain yielded. She reached the top and he stood
there with eyes black as the night. She galloped to him. Feeling her horns
break off sending waves of pain through her. She was on her magnificent two
legs again and she ran open armed to him.
This world fragmented when she felt his embrace. She saw the
ocean and desert in his eyes. The cold that whipped around them no longer
touched her.
“You have to jump,” he said with a half smile.
“You have to jump with me,” she said with all seriousness.
His smile left him. “I’m not the one the heart wants.”
She looked over her shoulders. To her right a volcano,
spewing hot and red. To her left the raging sea, which swallowed up the desert.
“You made it this far to me, you only have to jump,” He was
desperate his eyes matched the air around them.
“You have to love yourself,” She said.
It seemed like he let out a primeval bellow but his mouth
never opened. He hugged her deeply.
“We’ll jump together,” he promised.
“You jump first,” she said.
He looked at her frantically, madly, fearfully. They kissed deeply
and she let go of him. As he fell, she whispered to the storm “I’m not coming.”
His body crashed into the lava and the mountain cracked, gyrated
and heaved. The wind fell flat and the sky began to fall.
“The things we do for love.” She whispered to his heart as
she dove gracefully into the calm ocean. She watched the world die. Sinking
poetically into the sea. She swam to the edge of the ocean and let herself fall
off, free.
