Written by Christie Viola
Based on some situations originated by James Cameron.
The sea is deep, as is my love.
It resounds throughout my frail body, pooling in my chest and drowning my
piteous heart in the waves that dash against my pale, trembling breast. The
rhythm of the frothing waves compels me, in its steady pulse, to remind me of
the pulse of my own dear love, who once lived, who once loved me. It was an
anchovy, and it was ripped from my loving bosom by the jaws of cruel death; its
meager carcass thrown back into the detestable, turgid waters, the same waters
that had, at the beginning, brought it to me...
I found you on the shores of
Aberystwyth, beneath the scorching gaze of the midday sun. There I learnt to
love you, writhing and gasping for your fading life. Others would have found
you insignificant, a trifle, a putrid pizza topping to be thrown away, but I
alone saw your stark beauty. You, dear anchovy, were like a little gem on the
shores of a silver sea, a diamond in the rough who shone only to those with
eyes to look beyond the limitations of our earthly bodies, and bask in the
warmth of the soul within. Yes, the shimmering light within you made even the
blaze of the sun seem feeble and pale, and I would have been content to shelter
in its glow forever. Or so it should have been, were it not for my human
weakness, that strange thirst for adventure with which the peaceful mind of the
fish has never been plagued.
Yes, I wish now with all my heart
that the ship had not come, enticing me with its promises of adventure and
fulfillment upon the rolling blue depths of the sea, tempting me away from that
idyllic life upon the shore with you, my dearest love. But the ship came
nonetheless, and I was compelled to leave with it, my mind clouded by foolish
dreams and bootless desires.
You, for your small, sad part,
knew better; you pleaded with me not to waste my life, my youth, on such a
fool's venture. And my mind grew dark and savage with a baseless anger; and
even as my heart ached with love for you, I struck you down, there upon the
callous shore, with the very hands that caressed your scales glimmering like
the hopes of joy I had forsaken when I realized I must slay you for the greater
good.
But it brought no good, no
comfort, no hope. There you lay, cold and rotten, those paper-thin scales
tinged with sickly green and peeling off, gathering to form a lurid garden of
what had been your armor. Even then, I knew that I would never feel joy or love
again, that my soul had become a wasteland as desolate and lifeless as the sand
beneath my feet, stretching away into a bleak infinity. Pterodactyls circled,
shrieking like the demons of hell, above my bowed head as I trembled with grief
and fear, as I crossed the shore and boarded that fateful, thrice-damned ship
that would take me away to lands unknown.
I spent not a moment on that
vessel that I did not contemplate leaping over the side, to rejoin whatever
immortal part of your being might swim amidst the waves once more. But that
ugly man, that revolting fellow called Jack, thought that he could save me,
salvage my wretched soul from its pitiable state; he thought, perhaps, that he
could replace you. But he knew nothing of you, of what you truly were to me,
and in his blindness he thought he held a cure for my sorrow, when the only balm
for my agony would have been to obey the urgings of my better half, and throw
myself into the waiting vault of the sea, the greatest and deepest of graves.
Jack, too, died, less than a week
later, and I could not mourn him. Though I watched his body sink below the
ocean's glassy surface--where, perhaps, some part of you remains--I never
grieved for him. My heart held no more warmth or feeling than a garden in the
grip of winter, all dust and lifeless branches laden with the weight of snow
and memories.
With the years, I returned to my
home, now with another weight to bear upon my weak and weary shoulders–a child,
a daughter, the only lasting memory of Jack that I would ever have. Oh,
anchovy, you would have loved her, loved the sparkle in her wide blue eyes, so
like the gleam of the sun upon your scales, and loved the color of those
innocent orbs themselves, as deep and rich as the water that was your home.
Winifred, like me, discovered the
joys of the sea almost from the moment of her birth, and I had no more power to
stop her wandering along the shore on some journey of exploration than to hold
back the tides themselves. On one fateful day, she discovered, on the very spot
where I had found you, and where your tiny bones now lie beneath the sand,
another creature of the sea whose watery allure ensnared her young, innocent
heart. It was a sea urchin, a fine, prickly fellow, whose proud barbs and
spines even pierced my own heart, as bitter, loveless, and forgotten as I was.
She picked up her new love and
cradled him to her childish bosom, and I wanted to cry out, to stop her in any
way I could, to save her from the ghastly fate that had been my own. Mortal
woman can never hope to truly find bliss; the paradise of the love shared with
marine life is forever closed to our kind. And so I stood by, a silent,
powerless witness to the bond now forged between poor Winifred and that
monstrous, scheming sea urchin. She was so delicately unaware of the chains
that would tether her to its fiendish demands, enslave her to its jagged, cruel
beauty.
Anchovy, twelve years have passed
since we parted--twelve long years fraught with cold despair and the restless
yearning of the sad winds that howled in my hollow chest. Twelve endless years
separate us, yet tether us to our mutual unknowing of what could have been, if
only I had not been so thoughtless as to end your blessed life with one
barbaric strike.
I had perfection in my grasp, and
I cast it down and slaughtered it, on virgin sands that were made impure with
your blood–yes, even on those same sands where I had once loved you with every
fiber of my being. I can only hope that my daughter, who now adores a different
breed of the many children of the sea, shall be free of whatever latent madness
lurked within my soul.
The End.