05-16-2016, 03:34 PM
He does not fear the sea so much as he despises it.
For the sea took his parents – or, to be far, they gave themselves to it, a gift swallowed greedily by the beating waves, while he and Adeline lay, newborn and tangled, on its dark shores.
From then on, the taste of sea-salt on his tongue always makes his stomach turn, fills him with an indescribable sense of dread.
He almost smells the sea, now, an echo of it on a wafting breeze. He tenses, paper-thin skin drawing tight, but then the scent is gone and he wonders if it was there at all. He’s paranoid, but rightly so – a man who returns from death has every right to paranoia. Even more, he’s a man made fragile, blown glass and paper skin, a beacon for predators.
(And hadn’t the predators found him, in the end? Hadn’t the wolves – the wolf – taken her meal?)
Adaline is gone, now – he doesn’t know where and he tries not to think of her lest his heart decay between his ribs. He doesn’t think of her. He doesn’t think of wolves, either, of snarling jaws and the sound of bones breaking.
The way they’d both said his name.
He doesn’t think of these things because this is a new life, he is reborn – albeit reborn into the same frail body he’d first pioneered – made whole again by forces he cannot comprehend.
He no longer smells the sea.
But he does see a woman, pale-colored, standing alone.
She does not seem like a predator, though lord knows he’s been wrong before. But the loneliness that wells within him is a strong force, and one he bows to – bows to by walking closer to her, a small smile on his face.
“Hello,” he says, and that’s all, that’s all.
contagion
be careful making wishes in the dark