Monsters are Men. //Calypso

SHE IS wandering when she finds him in the daylight.

Mandatory reapings leave her with a sense of uneasiness. She is not one to run away from her troubles - rather than face them head-on, to tackle them with all her might, demand them to stop their wrongdoings or face the consequences. And the place in which she feels the most insecure is silly, for someone from Four. The shore is supposed to be their life source, their second home, an escape from the real world. But it has brought her nothing but nervousness ever since she was a little girl, struggling to breathe underneath a mass greater than her eyes could see. It was not the water that brought her such discomfort but the endlessness of it. How creatures lurked beneath the waves, the changing tides in the blink of an eye, nightmares and dark stories spun from the depths no man has ever ventured in before. Such fear-striking paralyses forced her body to sink to the floor, struggling to keep herself afloat whilst her father barked muffled instructions and her sister laughed from ashore. Calypso can't swim, Calypso can't swim, Calypso can't-

- be dealing with such silly childhood fears. So she found herself wandering towards her greatest weakness, cautious but determined. Yet a fondness for the sea (from afar, of course) has always settled in her bones - perhaps it was her heritage, part of her very core that yearned for something of home - for she understood it's systems. Always yearning for something beyond it's reach, slamming into the shoreline time after time, clawing for another inch wave by hammering wave. Sighing for something it cannot have, no matter how many times it tries to prove itself worthy.

Stories have filtered through her ears about creatures of the deep that listen to your thoughts, absorb your dreams and sometimes, if you're lucky enough, grant your wishes. Playground games of hearing the whispers of the shoreline through seashells have long since left her peer group, preferring lighters and music to conch's and echoes, but she lets her guard down just this once. I loved my sister, she thinks to the ocean. I kept her safe. Surely she should have loved me for that? (The sea does not reply, of course, because they are silly, childish ideas - but whatever humanity she tries to conceal outside of the Love Club sighs inside of her.) I did the right thing. Right?

Silence follows. The ocean has spoken. Still, she doesn't shift her perspective. Doubts come late at night when she thinks of childish delights and simpler times, succumbing to a wave of sleep as it drags her down to slumber by heavy eyelids for anchors and sheets of white as sails.

But echoes of heartbroken screams have always awoken her from guilt-ridden dreams.

At first she thinks it's the sirens screaming their answers to her - answers that can only be heard where they reside, deep underneath the water. She is a lighthouse and the screams call for her, her beckoning light needed underneath the darkness of the water to guide them home. Perdita's muffled chant starts up again in-time with her racing heart and she sinks, ever-so-slowly, back into the memory.

There is sunlight above her - and bubbles, bubbles of air, her precious air, blurred faces of her father and her sister that she claws at - but the water drags her limbs down second by precious second, screaming lungs from a screaming little girl fighting the water. But she's become the tattle-tale, the siren caller, for the very first time and the ocean wants its precious creature, it wants to take her home as she screams for help and for safety and for someone or something to lift her from this crime as the ocean steals away her life and Calypso can't swim, Calypso can't swim, Calypso can't swim, Calypso can't-

- breathe. Because it's him, the artist in the night. No, not an artist, she thinks - a criminal. But all her evaluating through night after terrible night has lead her to question herself yet again (she's getting awful good at that lately) - is art really a crime?

No. But her next actions are.

He can't see her - perhaps he can hear her. After all, she could certainly hear him. Regardless, as her shoes crunch against the shells and stone, unwanted debris from the ocean left discarded and helpless against the rocky shore, she comes to a halt beside his grieving frame. (Take a risk, the sea calls - but she cannot hear it on the ground. Dive in.)

She does anyway. If she can face the ocean currents headstrong, then why does infiltrating through his boundaries seem so uneasy? Perched next to him upon the sand and shells she spies his hands, tainted with red paint - no, it's not paint at all - and simply sits. And she listens. And she waits. Nothing, or nobody, makes a sound.

Today, the tattle-tale sings no song.

And in the silence, she thinks can see him for the first time.