A Silent Girl From A Wailing Sea

They called them the 'Blue Boys' because by the time the sea spits them back out, the cold has dyed their skin - tracing their veins indigo; turning firm, strong lads into stiff statues of bloat and salt.

We’ve buried three this month. Three half-empty coffins, as the water doesn't return all it takes.

Three more doors to knock on; three more families to destroy with all but a whispered few words and a salvaged trinket from drifting pieces of a violated vessel.

We were a modest town once, defined by our close-knit camaraderie, our livelihoods endowed by the brimming life of the Muir, but now it only strangles us with loutish, nautical hands - drowning its patrons in a trench of loss and fear.

And it only sinks us more with each passing funeral.

Every clerk, every shopkeeper, every conversation has become blighted with worry and superstition, the docks are emptier than anyone has ever known, and many veteran tamers of the waves are reluctant to face the tide that has claimed so many. Gone are the days of children chasing gulls across the shore, faces smudged with brine and glee. Gone are the days of gathering feasts of music and bonfires and old tales shouted over cider and boiled crab.

I've lived here most of my life, my family hailing from distant shores, braced against the gales that can batter our cottages. The salted wind has carved lines into my young face, and the sun has nearly faded my eyes - watching the place I was born into tangle itself up like seaweed clinging to a hull.

I might've been the first to break, had someone not stolen the privilege - on a fog-coated afternoon, within the warm walls of our local watering hole.

"Ah, I'll tell this whole damned room for naught, lads!" Rafe had shouted from his piss-stained corner booth, wafting in an odorous bubble of beer with his weary crew. "Them Blue Boys arenae just bad luck! No, it's no' the sea takin' what she wants; it's somethin' far fouler... an' ye know well who's brung it about!"

His rant had quickly earned the attention of the crowded room.

And he noticed, revelling in the attention.

"That old keeper of th' light - aye, th' one wi' the glassy stare. He'd been mutterin' strange words at the last high tide, last season; I'd seen him... an' the first youngun washed up no' a day later." His eyes met the room of drunk, curious listeners. "D'ye blame the sea?! Nae! Blame that old bastard an' his hexes, I say... an' whatever foul beast he brought to our muir."

It was the bartender, of all people, who encouraged the revered fisherman, as I made myself even quainter on my lonely table, praying to be ignored.

"Perhaps someone should pay the old bloke a visit?" He said, just loud enough to be heard.

I saw glints begin to spark in their boozy eyes. A mob, not unlike the ones from my parents’ homeland stories, was forming. 4 months of this torture - they longed for someone to blame; someone to punish.

Rafe's eyes went wild as a feral grin spread over his mouth. The others were already rousing, sloshing down their drinks and beginning to roar in agreement, their sticky fists pounding tables. I shrank further into the dark, panic writhing in my stomach.

His eyes met mine.

"Still keepin' your nose out of the wind, lass?!"

I shook my head, but Rafe was in no mood to let anyone slip this net. He lurched himself across the room, scratching his stool along the floorboards, as his crowd of rubble and ruckus took form.

"It was one of your kin, nae?" He pressed, voice low. "You wanna see this end, nae?!" He cried, and the crowd surged at his words, some faces scared with grief; others aflame with the thrill of violent justice.

My breath became shallow as Rafe clamped a rough, leathery hand on my shoulder. There would be no denying him - not in front of such a crowd.

And so I nodded.

"Good girl."

I was only a child when I first met the keeper - chasing my younger sister among the wildflowers and tufts of seagrass at the foot of that looming, bleached tower. The summer air was warm and thick, with a scent of gorse and honeysuckle, as her laughing game came to an abrupt end when my foot caught on a hidden root, sending me tumbling into a mess of green. The sting in my knee startled out a sharp cry, and my sister's panicked face hovered above me.

Through teary eyes, I saw him approach from forbidden steps - tall, with a stiffness to his stride and a kindness in his weathered look.

"Quite the wound, little lady." He knelt at my side, producing a clean handkerchief and a rusted tin of ointment. His large, worn hands were gentle as he cleaned the scrape, and as he worked, humming a foreign tune to himself, he soon coaxed a wobbly smile from my sister and me with peculiar stories - tales of shipwrecks, rare sea birds, and midnight flowers from lost islands that only revealed themselves under the lighthouse's beams. He ended his stories with a warning: 'little girls should know better than to play by the lighthouse.'

Even then, I sensed something otherworldly in his manner - as if he belonged to another realm. But that day, beneath an endless blue sky, he was a quiet and straightforward hero who mended my wound and sent us home with a handful of sweets and a newfound reverence.

Future encounters were always fleeting over the years.

Sometimes, I'd see him trudging through the mist at daybreak, his shape devoured by an old oilskin coat, carrying pails from the shore. Other times, we'd share a nod at the market; his eyes never quite finding mine, constantly darting towards the sea as if it spoke his name.

Once, I watched him mend fishing nets at the rocks, his hands deft and silent, humming that same foreign melody only the gulls seemed to answer. People spoke rarely to him, but children watched from behind fences, trading chronicles of his magic... or his curse.

But I remember clearest the night his light went out. The beams, so constant, suddenly vanished, and our harbour became shrouded in black. It was the same night the first body was found - face blue, eyes wide.

The bells were deafening; no one slept.

By morning, the lighthouse door was bolted; the keeper nowhere to be found. He must've sheltered himself inside for reasons unknown, ignoring all begs and demands that met his doorstep.

No more than a few nights later, was when last I saw my stubborn sister; when the sun had barely slipped beneath churning waves, I woke to the sounds of the bedroom door snicking shut. At first, I believed it was a dream; that the familiar wind was rattling on the latch. But when I felt across the bed, her side was cold and indented.

And the front door was swinging open.

I failed to call her name as my bare feet met the sandy path towards the shore. There, at the border of a restless surf, I saw her as she walked gently into the sea, her white nightgown trailing behind her like a wisp of cloud. She gave not one look back at my frantic waves and gestures; not a word. The water swallowed her, quick and silent, before I could even reach the pier.

They found her days later - what was left - her face bobbing along the water's surface, amidst a foaming froth. She was one of the earliest. A Blue Boy, though she had never been a boy at all.

4 months... 4 months of silent grief.

Manifesting, finally, into a lantern-lit, strained march through the fog. The crowd moved as a single, muttering mass - boots scuffing the damp earth, lights swinging shadows across sour, tense faces. I wished to walk at the rear, just another soul swept up in a vengeful resolve, looking only at gnarled fists instead of red-rimmed eyes, but Rafe insisted that I walked with him at the front.

His voice led in low, grim bursts, knuckles white around the handle of a meat cleaver. In my place, somewhere behind, a boy began to quietly sob to themselves as the lighthouse - a pale spectre at the edge of the world - emerged. Rafe took an unwavering step towards the silent, dead monolithic tower. My stomach twisted as every tale, and a single kindness, clashed with the contagious anger and dread driving us forward.

We would not be halted - only the echoes of our siege would spill across the bay, and the distant, mournful cries of gulls overhead.

Rafe pounded his fist on the door. "Open up! We know yer in there!" His minions became wired, twitching with driftwood clubs, knives and whatever other instruments they could use to inflict harm - a restless collective of 20 strong, brave bodies.

Is that what we were there to do? Hurt him?

I made myself scarce, ushering away from our leader to a withered bed of wildflowers, as Rafe began to attack the door, hacking into its thick wooden seams with the utmost ferocity.

It was fruitless, his efforts becoming deranged and desperate, until a titan of a man stepped forth, armed with a hammer. He gestured to the handle and hinges - weak points - and assisted Rafe with the long, tedious task of ripping down a door. Every strike, every crack of the wood, every morsel of progress made jolted the crowd like they were starved dogs taunted by fresh meat.

The door eventually surrendered, ripped from its frame by three men, and was hurled down the cliffs to meet a splintering demise. Rafe, sweating, spun around to find me amidst the dying flowers, his eyes manic beneath the wet mess of his fringe, and offered me a hand.

"Justice. For ye' sister, girl."

I didn't believe I had a choice. I slowly took his offer, and we became the first to enter.

We stepped into a spacious, circular chamber of slick, moistened walls and peeling green paint. A spiral staircase - iron treads crusted with rust, wooden handrails worn smooth - snaked upwards along the wall... and down, vanishing into a murky gloom. As a handful of us filtered in, we warily inspected the central living space. It was sparse: a small cot with a threadbare blanket sat beneath a porthole window streaked with barnacles; an iron stove, cold and black, stood in a corner, flanked by a chipped kettle; a battered, cluttered workbench sat on another side, overflowing with sea charts and waterlogged tomes.

Shelves held strange objects: wooden carvings, a jar of cloudy water and faded parchments of strange symbols.

One stood out - a carving larger than the others. Maybe a foot high, stained a dark, greenish-black, was a hunched figure of thrashing tentacles, encroaching wings, and clawed feet half-buried in chiselled ripples. Its bulbous head was crowned with curling, segmented palpi; its eyes were deep-set, hollow shadows; rough gouges resembling scales were precisely marked along its torso and limbs.

Several villagers drew back, almost by instinct, while others clustered closer - pulled by a curious lure. A young man, tears still welling in his eyes, became infatuated with the pungent piece of wood. He hummed a tune to himself as he bowed his head - one I had heard before from a far older, reclusive man.

Rafe's eyes were fixed on the effigy. Beside him, faint murmurs bubbled out while behind us, lanterns flickered - once, twice - and the wind let out a keen, hounding sigh. Someone in the rear, near where I had found myself, shuffled with uncertainty. Glancing at him, it seemed the entrance itself had grown further away.

Then, the young man spoke in a pitiful, quivering whisper. "Bless us, O' Priest."

A suffocating silence fell upon the room. It happened too fast. I opened my eyes and spun to count the faces - Rafe, the boy, and myself and... no one. Footprints, damp and scattered, traced aimless tracks on the stone; the others were gone, extinguished as quickly as they'd burned, blinked out in an instant.

Rafe bolted to the door, chest heaving, his bravado wavered. "No-NO! Where'd ye' go?!" His plea boomed out into the still, silent fog.

The hushed shiver that ran up my back felt colder than the sea itself.

Rafe rounded to the boy now kneeling before the idol, praying in a dialect I could not understand. "What have ye done, boy?!" He spat, his voice shaking, as he smashed the statue from the shelf, breaking the boy free from whatever zealot trance he was in, replaced with a heavy weight of sudden, unexplainable loss.

A mob no more; we were witnesses to an inexplicable phenomenon.

The boy stammered to free words from his mouth as Rafe, violently, hoisted him up by the neck and shoved him into a wall. "Are ye bewitched, son?! Cursed?! Hexed?!"

The boy's pleading eyes found me, a timid shape scuttling her way to the exit.

"I-... I don't-" He choked out.

Metal clangs erupted from the staircase. Something was still here, downstairs.

Rafe swapped targets and, like an animal, skittered his way to the first step of the descent - the boy becoming no more than a memory. "Yer name, lad?" He asked, transfixed on the darkness before his boots.

"Uh... Caleb." The boy squeaked.

"Are ye' one of mine?"

"N-... no, sir."

"Ye' are now... lead us down, Caleb." He stepped to the side, a fire blazing in his eyes, and gestured for the boy to take the plunge. As he did, he caught me almost loose from this dilemma. "An' where, the flyin' fuck, d'ye think yer goin', lass?"

I pressed myself so tightly against the wall I nearly hoped to disappear into it. My breath caught somewhere between my chest and throat, every muscle bolstered in anxious stiffness, as the trembling boy took a shaky step into the breach. I could do nothing but watch as an unforgiving darkness consumed his entire form, and then Rafe, once again, offered me his hand and I, a final time, slowly crossed the room and took it.

It was a laboratory. A sprawling, timeless, cavernous lair - the walls cut with mineral stains - of marine horror. Green and orange-tinted lanterns, fat with puffy moths, illuminated the ugly, metallic den of shunned, heinous science. Pickled messes festered in stained jars: eels knotted in impossible shapes, milky crabs with too many legs, clots of eggs glued to terrariums, tools and trinkets were aplenty amidst dense notebooks; a single, giant chalkboard brutalised with equations and sketches squatted in a corner of corrosion, scribbled madness crept along and down its surface like a leak.

And in another corner, within a crystal clear cylinder of glass, was a fair, beautiful young woman, alive and awake - her eyes longing towards the three of us - up to her waist in brown, bloody water.

Her mouth stretched to speak, and from the gaping depths of her throat came only crackled, inaudible gurgles. Frustrated, she struck her glass prison, splashing about like a flailing fish, and clawed at her own neck - as if desperately trying to find her own voice.

But another voice crawled out of the dark instead, fractured and wet.

"They called it mercy, once, to be lulled by the tide; to be promised an end at sea. It is a lie."

The keeper emerged from the shadows, waddling into the light, drenched and slimy with bloated, saturated mossy skin ready to burst like a balloon. There were cracks in his face where a fizzing saltwater oozed out and dripped to the floor with a soggy splat; his eyes were glazed and tinted with a shade of coral pink, and he unceremoniously stunk like a long-dead, rotten trawl.

"There is neither peace nor pain, only an eternal slumber, rocked by drowned lullabies." He slugged his way to his prisoner, resting a hand on the glass; every word he spoke took tremendous, gagging effort. "You... showed me, didn't you? I heard you; I heard him. But there is no song left now. None. Only the chorus of old bargains struck in the deep, by those far older than I, with things far hungrier than the sea herself." He turned to face us, his prisoner grudging his very presence. "They took your lil' marching mob, one by one, to the shore while you slept. Do you remember? Go and look."

Rafe marched towards the ghastly keeper, his stench making him gag. "Enough with yer rambles, old man!" He snarled. "What have ye' become?! What dark work have ye' woven?!" His eyes met the imprisoned woman, who tapped and fidgeted within her case. "An' who the fuck's this, dame?!"

The keeper's lips curled into something like a smile, water beads dripping from the gapes in his mouth. "She is... a curse, son, from a far harbour, from farer shores. I have tried to fix her, but the deep longs to reclaim their song."

As if on cue, said 'curse' within her glass cage, began to convulse and seize.

"NO-no, no, no-" The keeper began, retreating into the darkness from whence he came, as he miserably sifted through various tools across a table.

A vigorous thunder rattled the tower as the woman's blue eyes flashed an impossibly bright pink. Immediately, a searing light - far more colourful than the coralline tint in the keeper's own eyes - flared in both Rafe's and Caleb's stares. Their bodies stiffened and turned in unison; their fists trembled, and a blood-lust frenzy enthralled them, warping their faces into hardened masks of unfiltered rage and purpose.

The woman behind the glass, her more uncanny features momentarily illuminated by the light from her eyes, stared solely at me - her power unmistakable, but somehow utterly useless on my mind.

Rafe was first, dropping his cleaver and charging the keeper with a roar that was barely human; Caleb followed, silent but wild, with his hands outstretched. The keeper's arms raised in a reflexive defence, but there was a moment of understanding in his shocked eyes, before the chaos, as he looked only, transfixed, at his beautiful prisoner. The two men pounced on him, raining down blows with primal violence, echoing through the chamber a symphony of splattering blood and brutality.

The woman looked to the cleaver with a silent plea, then at me, then the cleaver again. I'm not sure what compelled me: her beauty, sympathy, the fear that Rafe and Caleb's delirium would soon aim at me, but my hand found the cleaver's grip, raised it, and brought it crashing down on the curved glass. It cracked, shivering under the blow, and then burst outwards - cold, briny, murky, bloody water rushed out, swirling me up as I tumbled to the floor, my limbs becoming twisted with the woman as she gasped and coughed up foam, her voice still a hoarse, wordless gurgle.

She steadied herself, grateful, and for a moment, I saw only lost stars in her charming eyes as the light within them flickered.

She kissed me, passionately, intimately, and every sense and nerve within me detonated as a torrent of water gushed from her mouth into mine. I pushed her off, choking and spluttering - much to her visible dismay - as Rafe... whirled around to face us, angry and confused, covered in blood and grime.

While Caleb, shaking, silently wept over the keeper's broken, motionless body.

"Monster."

He was upon us in seconds. The woman scampered up to her feet, stretching her limbs and squaring her shoulders, as a wild mess of swinging fists assaulted her. She deflected the first blow, but Rafe's strikes were reckless as he, for lack of a better description, started to beat the shit out of her. In the fray, almost slipping in the water at our feet, I found myself bringing the cleaver down on his shoulder, ejecting a geyser of blood.

A flailing, panicked elbow connected sharply with my temple.

I could barely hear the woman's strangled gasp before my vision dazzled into spots - the world slipping away - and then, muffling the shouts and an ear-ripping scream, my eyes dragged me into an empty, blank nothingness.

-

I remember a sky swollen with clouds, my hands raw from gripping the splintered rim of a skiff. Birds cry somewhere above, unseen, and every swell of the waves feels like it will tip this fragile shell into the drink. My petticoat clings to me, sodden and freezing; salt stings my lips, and each breath devolves more into a rasp.

The lantern at the prow reveals my distant brothers, left to drown with what remains of the vessel. This air promised adventure - a lie! It only promises the grim patience of the sea, awaiting the young and naive to embark on their voyages, to abandon their civil, industrial safeties. I see a shape moving amidst the wreckage. I shout, my voice breaking in the wind, but there is no answer. The horizon is nothing, the shore behind us is erased; lamps from a distant harbour are mere pinpricks, if they are even there at all.

My arms begin to ache as I row and row until my muscles tear and the blisters open, my pained cries and whimpers lost to the cold.

I am alone.

I am going to die.

The wind lashes at me, fierce and cunning, as my lifeboat grows still - helplessly veering in the waves. I curl into a ball as a monstrous, dark mass stirs beneath me - too large to belong to any earthly whale - and I muster every prayer possible from my blue tongue.

And then I hear it, as if something below answered my small surrender.

A song. Ancient. Hungry.

And my last memory of this mortal coil was not of fear, but of bliss as I looked to the side of my boat, to the splashing of waves, to find the kind, smiling face of a woman with shining, pink eyes, offering her hand.

This was not my life; this was not my mind, my memories, my dreams.

I am, again, a witness to something phenomenal. To a life most monstrous and wonderful.

We are deep beneath the fathomless blue, where no sunlight dares wander. My skin, supple, scaled and a glimmering teal, glides through black water. Around me is an endless choir - my sisters - raising a song that rattles the bones of lost sailors. Their boats wreck, their limbs slack, and their eyes drift as our music winds them into peace, then pulls them gently through the frigid water and into our arms. Mercy... and a balm to the ears of the one who slumbers in the most bottomless abyss.

His occupancy is a constant tumour on my mind, vast and incomprehensible. We weave our melodies not for ourselves, or the lost souls at sea, but to lull him; to shield the waking world from his gaze and to soothe his endless, nightmarish hunger between his dreams. Sometimes, I am rewarded, and I rise to collect new blood for his ranks - a gift and a tribute.

Another sister.

One night, as storms gnash at an island where the veil between land and sea is thin, I surface atop foaming rocks. I sing, as I have sung since the first flood, and my voice threshes through the hearts of men. I do not notice that one of them is a hunter until the harpoon pierces my side and the net falls tight as steel around me. My gnashing teeth and glittery eyes fail to frighten him as he utters words in an old tongue, poisoned with grief, and hums a melody of my own kin, dragging me onto his ship.

Chained, exhausted, wounded and dry, my voice shrinks into a whisper as I am ferried away, away from sisters and songs and a deep lord, across harsh, foreign waters to a tower of stone and glass on a thriving, oblivious coast.

Beneath the indifferent sweeps of light beams, he imprisons me: first in a tank, then a cage, then a cylinder of brackish water. He studies my voice, notes my every attempt to sing in a quest to unravel the music, until my throat begins to fail. But I do not forget, nor do I forgive the icy stare of the man who watches and waits as my memory of the depths bleeds into the harsh walls of his dungeon.

He drips potions into my prison, wafting scents and hallucinogenic spasms into my eyes - loosening a long-buried anchor in the recesses of my mind, beyond my lord's throbbing presence. It is not a blessed recollection; it is a torturous regurgitation of mortality.

The drizzle of London mornings, the clack of typewriters, the smell of a waxed floor and fresh ledgers. I sit tucked behind a brass-screened window, counting coins; my days are only an orderly routine, not an eternal life amidst the blue. It is a cancer. The embrace of my mother, the sternness of my father, flicking through a newspaper, and the laughter of my youngest brother echoing down the halls of our home.

When night comes, it blooms with candlelit dinners as I sit beside a man unknown to me, whose fingers brush my red hair from my face. We dream quietly of escape - of ships, of wide water, of building a life of fewer ordeals. I remember the love in his eyes, the way he said my name, the way I once believed that my future had room for joy.

"An island just for us, Sophie."

My heart aches and breaks as I see myself sweeping down cobbled streets and hear the city's noise - so, so distant now. There is a grand ship, a crew of my siblings, and a promise wrapped around the finger of my love. There is a hurried goodbye, the faces of my parents blur with pride and anxiety; the embraces of my friends are warm.

For these stolen minutes, I am simply a girl - a daughter, a sister, a clerk, a lover - never dreaming that her voice might one day still the sorrow in a drowned god.

And then I return to the vat, a monster again, to watch my captor unravel - a timeless ritual, churned on with my own thoughts. I see the slow hunch eat his shoulder, his fingers swell, his eyes dim with a pink glow he thought himself immune to. Something far worse than my song had reached him, within the comfort of his own dreams. His feet faltered, and he would stumble between scattered notes, sometimes pausing to stare at me with a begging, hollow gaze - as if I might forgive him, or appease the one that insulted his sleep. Other times, he would speak to things only he could see, muttering names I'd never known; on the worst days, he would press his head to my glass and weep with eroding wounds, each breath tearing through brittle lungs.

Once, he tried to hum a half-remembered lullaby, but his voice broke - rotten.

I suddenly awoke from the fractured dream of sea wenches and a doomed old man, jolting into a room sodden with violence and gore. I pushed myself up from cold stones, my head still throbbing from Rafe's elbow, my ears ringing with the memory of toxic water forced down my throat.

For a moment, as my vision cleared, the world wobbled as if half-submerged. Then I saw them: Rafe's body sprawled in a widening crimson pool, his eyes empty, fixed on the ceiling; his face frozen in the grimace of whatever horror was unleashed upon him. Caleb, too, was crumpled against the wall, neck twisted at an impossible angle.

Sophie - I think that was her name - lay by the stairs. Her skin gleamed with the blue-green sheen of a caught fish, her legs had become a shimmering tail of quartz scales and fins, and her ribs... Gills - ragged, heaving, slick with dew - opened and closed along her sides, twitching desperately as she gulped for air. Her fingers, tipped with bladed, red claws, clutched at the metal steps; her face was still beautiful, but her eyes, pale and pink, were wide with panic.

She reached for me, mouthing a wordless request.

I dared not move, rooted by shock and pity, as her tail slapped the ground in an attempt to communicate, or a failed strive to move.

It then sprouted in my skull - a deep rhythm; a pulsing worm - shoving my doubts aside until a single goal remained.

Help her.

Help your sister.

My timid hands found her body, moving with a mind of their own, and with every ounce of strength I could muster, I cradled her into my arms, into my chest, and lugged her out from the grim, dark prison that had been her home for an aeon. She grew colder and stiffer as we ascended those rusted steps, her battle for breath becoming a one-sided war of grit, until we emerged - out of the lighthouse, free, to a wilted garden and a town on the brink of oblivion.

The fog had subsided, replaced with a catastrophic, raging storm of cutting gales and cataclysmic thunder - as if the Gods themselves were planning to rip our grisly residence from the earth and hurl it to the heavens. Every home shook, every latched window rattled; the wails of livestock cut through the madness as debris and produce and materials were flung up into the sky and down the street.

A weak, clawed finger gently tapped my chest as I braced against the elements. I looked down at the one I carried to see her pointing to the beach, to the sea, where the epicentre of the storm originated - manifesting as an unrivalled, titanic tornado of torrential wind and dark water, crackling and sparking with a grotesque, eldritch lightning of green and pink, at the crisp of the horizon. As the lightning flashed amid those smouldering, smoking clouds, a monstrous silhouette became visible within the hurricane: an impossibly large, hulking behemoth, older than the sea itself... its features all too familiar.

Here to reclaim what was rightfully his.

The weak chords of a song left Sophie's lips as we journeyed to the shore, while the parasite in my head throbbed and moaned in sync.

Every man, woman and child I had ever seen through my years stood waiting amongst the sand and the rocks and the pebbles and across the wooden boards of the harbour, the pier, or stood still throughout the street, not a lick of motion to their bodies; not a glimmer of life in their unblinking eyes as they stared, 300 lives at least, at the approaching nautical colossal, wrapped in a coat of unstoppable nature.

The surf bit at my knees as we reached the water, the cold stinging more than any wound, as I gently lowered Sophie to be embraced by the waves.

For a breath, nothing.

Then, with a violent jerk, her tail shivered and flexed - scales flashing brilliantly in the lightning's glare - and she reeled upright, drawing great, greedy gulps of air, her lips splitting into a wide and triumphant smile. But, newly alive and electric, she did not race towards the monstrous silhouette dwelling at the storm's core. Instead, she lingered, floating beneath the surface; her luminous eyes locked with mine - relieved and terrified.

Something intelligible slipped from her mouth, carried upon a strong melody that snuck through the screaming wind.

"Thank you."

The storm itself hushed for a heartbeat, and the towering titan seemed to pause - hungry tendrils just out of reach - as if even the sea recognised the power that returned to its bosom.

She grinned, holding my gaze, and, as if it was the most critical decision in her life, she slowly offered me a hand - an invitation; a promise of escape, of belonging, of power. But my heart clenched with memory - the ghost of a sister, an empty house devoid of life, inescapable loss, and the weight of a bargain at sea. I shook my head, standing against the riptide.

"No," the word is soft, nearly swept away. "I... I can't."

Sophie's smile fumbled, her eyes blinked with understanding and sorrow, and she bowed her head, pressing a cool, webbed palm to the water's surface.

"Under stars. When you dream your last."

Then she was gone, darting off into the dark deeps towards her lord. Several shapes and bodies emerged and swam beside her as a song began to tug at my bones, unfaltering as it reached the storm.

I blinked - a reflex, nothing more than a nervous flutter of lashes - and it all disappeared, so sudden and complete that it snatched the air from my lungs. The air was warm then, touched with the delicate, golden perfume of summer and the gentle hiss of a lazy tide. I stood alone under a clear blue sky, wet sand clinging to my ankles, as the innocent sparkle of the sun dazzled off the waves - it had never looked more beautiful.

No tragedy. Nothing unnatural had ever trespassed here.

"Are ye' alright, lass?"

I squinted as a gruff figure approached, his jacket too big, patched and weathered - a fisherman, one of Rafe's old crew. He halted a few steps away, concern furrowing in his brow as he studied my face.

"Nora? Thade's girl; Ellie's sister, yeah?" He glanced uncertainly at the tide, then back at me, his anxiety deepening the circles under his eyes. "Blessed Mary, what're ye' doin', girl? You weren't thinkin' of followin' your sis, were ye?"

"I-no," I managed, voice thin.

His gaze widened, wary, as if part of him didn't believe I could speak.

"Let's... get ye' home, lass. Yeah?"

In the days that followed, I moved through life half-awake - wandering the rooms of my family's beaten cottage, absorbed by absence and silence. The fisherman found me again, whose kindness was gentle and a bit awkward, and he offered me a place aboard his trawler, the very ship Rafe once commanded. I joined the crew - not as a figure of authority, but as callused hands to mend nets, haul crates, and steady hearts as we ventured onto the Muir. The work was hard and cold, the water sometimes restless, but I found a strange comfort in the repetition, and a sense of belonging in the rowdy brotherhood of the crew.

When the catch was poor, I found myself meandering to the cemetery on the hillside, wind tugging at my coat as I stood before rows of faded stones. I left flowers and mourned for the ones I'd lost, anticipating when the next body would wash ashore. But, inexplicably, no more went missing. No deaths, no funerals, no Blue Boys. Never again.

Whatever dread had gripped our town had loosened its grip.

Nights would bring strange, vivid dreams: glimpses of an ancient city far beneath the waves, of pale sirens trailing red hair through coral towers, of songs echoing from impossible depths to soothe far more impossible creatures. I awoke each morning struck by a fierce sense of longing... and relief.

Most unexpectedly, I became friends with the new lighthouse keeper - a younger man, recently arrived from across the strait, who brought unknown wonders of the world (one of which was a computer). He welcomed me into the lighthouse's warming light, and on quiet afternoons, invited me to his studio deep in the basement, where canvas and paint replaced charts and science. His enthusiasm for art and colour restored something bright inside me, if only for a while.

With time, I found solace - and maybe joy - in the strokes of pencil and brush, turning my restless nights and haunted dreams into drawings and stories. At first, I sketched quietly, afraid someone might glimpse the strange visions that spilt from my sleep - haunting monsters and scaly women with bright eyes, ships collapsing beneath storms, villages swarmed with brine. My books grew thick, and soon the keeper discovered my hobby. He encouraged me, offering up empty walls and blank canvases for my work as the whole town took notice of the sometimes storyteller, sometimes artist, occasionally mad, young woman among them.

Recognition brought a thrill - a sort of pride in the way men would leave me flowers, or how shopkeepers begged for a tale at closing hour. But that pride quickly soured into a yearning I could not deny.

My home was growing stale.

Every face became too familiar, every grave and grace was counted; my work ached for wider eyes, for a world beyond fog and water.

So, at the words of travelling merchants and my peers, I packed what little I owned and set out for the mainland.

London.

What a change it was: frantic energy, the clang of its streets, the endless faces and lights that chased memories away. I struggled, hawking my art to anyone who would look, until galleries and magazines paid attention to the strange, quiet artist from a far, lonely shore - a silent girl from a wailing sea - painting monsters and penning fables.

People found me fascinating.

I tasted enough success to lay a banquet: my work hung in bookstores, my name was whispered at readings and galas, strangers sought my signature, and yet, even amid the noise and adulation, I found an old, ancient longing tug at me every time my eyes fell upon one of my paintings. Its hunger lived on in my colours, saddened when each story ended, and despite all I had gained, I never felt whole, for there was always some haunting emptiness waiting beyond the edge of my canvas.

The vivid dreams that once kindled my creativity soon began to fade, then vanished altogether, as if my body had forgotten how.

Soon, I could not even sleep, and my nights became dry, endless vigils.

It drove me to the edges of madness. My memoirs and logs grew scattered - fragmented documents written in nighttime scrawls that made no sense come morning. Time lost all substance as one day bled into the next, wakeful and restless; my eyes burned, my hands cramped with the effort of writing, but it could not stave off the deliriums nor the wretched throbbing in my head.

So, at the edge of the world, I paced an old pier, far from the city's clamour. The night sky was washed with stars, each one glinting atop the dark belly of the sea, and out of those velvet waves rose a song I knew: an old, achingly beautiful melody that threaded through my mind, as if calling me home - an overdue dream; a promise not forgotten.

A head of red hair plopped up to find me, shining in the moonlight, her pink eyes bright with hope and glee.

She outstretched a hand, as she had done years before.

And this time, I did not hesitate... as I threw myself into the sea.