pearl v. the ponds (day 3)

a rolling tide.

She eats between slaughters.

The forest swallows much of the surge, but it feeds the waters in other ways. The water washes over long-forgotten murders, collects pieces of the past that time has been patient with, kept buried beneath those vines and roots as fruit for later. Laid down to sleep long ago, the tide washes them in with the wind and the rain, bodies of stone picked up from where they were laid to rest an eon ago.

In their wake, they carry with them boughs of branches, snapped in the knight's plight to find honor amongst the wood. The steams of water collect bits of bark and boulder, smashing them into creatures unseen beneath the surface, their corpses carried along the current towards the lone girl trapped in her embrace this day.

Her powers now are so changed, odd, as if touched from a distance. She can only watch the girl, halo of golden hair streaked with mud and twigs from the storm, through the eyes of the statues she clambers past.

She wonders when the pirate will contemplate her weaknesses, the dreams that still distort her face here in these waking hours. The girl lays the foundations of gentleness, but there is no escaping the darkness that attempts to blot out her light now.

A masculine statue, broken and left to crumble from the waist down, lodges itself against a ledge. Roots from nearby ferns begin to extend and grow, holding him in place, something sparking behind its eyes as the arena witnesses the pirate survive the storm. 

a rolling tide.

Long moments pass between when the pirate goes under and when she reappears.

Like a stone cast loose in a stream, the current makes its attempts to take her. It rinses her clean, coats her in muck and washes her anew. A boulder can be shorn to a puddle, so over and over in water of both river and sea something tests her, forces water down the girls throat and behind her eyes. Attempt after attempt, the water rushes over the pirate and tries to flatten her, smother her, smooth her into a pebble until there's nothing left of her to carry downstream. Until the sound of a cry on her lips is a murmured plea, only then will the tide relent.

Reaching towards each other though, the pirate's hand finds stone. Lilypads, their tops lost beneath the surge, wrap long stems around the girls calves and feet as they meet, the echo of her heartbeat pulsing life through the choppy river surges. No longer ghosts in the water, the fauna urges against the blood in the water, the hungry thing that hunts using its scent.

The tide urges her not to hold her breath, to let the waters in, but she doesn't give up. The pirate does not relent. Still, soon, perhaps, the sea hopes to welcome her home.