The Mermaid's Ball

Somewhere, days upon days ago in a land far away there is a girl who was granted legs for one single night.

And in alone upon the tiles of a grand wide ballroom she dances.

She spins, twirls, pirouettes and spreads her lavender dress out behind her like a bubble floating to the surface of the water.

She moves like a kite taking flight on a day filled with lazy breezes that can't quite sweep it away. She twists, trips, falls, balances on one foot and falls again. Still she dances.

She doesn't ever suspect for a moment that she might be dreaming of a half truth life, still waiting, love-struck, beneath the seas.

Her silvery gossamer sleeves still float, as if suspended in water. Her skirt scallops out before her, a striking likeness of it's namesake shell.

And her shawl swims through the air. Sailing in a muted salmon silk, with golden tassels caught while attempting to fly up towards the sky.

Her hair is filled with coloured jewels, polished rocks appropriated from some pirate captain's bounty, still haunted by the singing voices of his crew. The rubies sparkle in the flickering low candle light.

She continues to dance upon lapis blue tiles - alone. While she sways to the humming waltz of her voice, the tapestries to her back sway in time with the haunting melody.

It echos, like a muffled voices through a conch shell, sprayed with the music of the sea.

On the walls- thick green gelatinous sea weed trickles down, garlands cut from the mermaid girl's hair. That was before it grew in tiny golden strands, thick and rich from her dainty head.

Her tail wasn't the only thing she lost in the water.

No where is there a prince to be found. She continues to dance.

She had no need of him to break her spell, so he was likely off in some other story, falling in love with some other fairy girl with rose water hair and whose mouth drips with diamonds and pearls each moment she speaks a word.

The mermaid girl swims in her undersea ballroom dream, a girl who was maybe granted a voice and footsteps and a name for but a single night.

She dances still.



Inspired by the artwork of Harry Clarke: 'The Little Sea Maid'.

The Ferryman Part 1

Telling the truth is easy. It's telling lies that takes a skill, talent and an enormous amount of delicious neck.

That's why Tric liked liars- they at least had interesting stories to tell him on their way down to Judgement. They would regale him with the tales of all the good deeds they ever did to man, child and beast- each more extravagant than the last. The truth tellers on the other hand were always pious and mopy and boring. Distinctly grey. And not at all interesting.

Tric had dubbed them 'blanket souls'. They all trickled down the river the same way, with the same sorrowful expression. The truthful dead. They were the god-fearing ones, the ones who would offer up each of their minutia of sins- like he was their last confessor or something. By the end of the journey they would step out of the boat, lean on the prow and their grey gaunt faces genuinely looked like they had soaked up half the river.

Those that lie were so much more interesting.Their untruth stories seeped out from their skin as they sat in the boat. The men with chiseled cheekbones and smoke soft eyes who would send ribbons upon ribbons of untruths down his ears. Blissful little lies about the scores of girls who fell in love with them. The old ladies who came down their necks dripping with mismatched gold and silver pieces, who boasted their countless good deeds to man kind. He had one woman actually claim she had made her fortune collecting young children off the streets, "Giving them a lovely roof and home", Tric remembered she smiled about those children with malice and gripped the wooden stick she used to walk with a touch harder. Tric thought that although he was stuck on a boat forever now- he wouldn't have rathered been those children. On the other side of her ebony cane.

She didn't seem to think that he had kept some of those very children company on this very journey. Huddled, scared children who hunkered over their small bodies on the river as if- even in death they were attempting to protect it. They cowered like animals who knew they were broken. Their spirits snapped in two. 

While Tric liked liars and hated the pious truth tellers, he made an exception for children. Usually they were sad, and lonely, didn't know where they were and often in that fear they were very truthful. Tric listened to their sad stories and instead of despising their truths he told them a few lies of his own.

Magnificent jeweled lies about how once they stepped beyond the darkness of the cave there would be the biggest birthday party that they could ever imagine was on the other side of the darkness. Full to the brim with giant slabs of pink coconut ices, and the richest chocolate cake they had ever seen. Plates of candied oranges would be passed around and twirling pretzels would be the only remotely 'healthy thing' they would have the option of eating. There would be dipping platters of peanut and almond butters with gigantic bowls of popped corn strewn from the ceiling on strings and garlands.

By the time Tric had finished appeasing them with tales of the food and friends that awaited- their curiosity and hunger were desperate to be sated.

Sometimes he wondered if it was wrong to lie to those who went back into the unknown, but then he consoled himself with the fact that he had no idea whether he was lying or not. He had never been through the cave. Although he was inclined to think that the welcome would be of a much more amiable nature were it that simple.

Still, he argued with himself- it was a kindness all the same.  The children normally had short desperate lives that were cut down before they had anything to be admonished for at Judgement. They deserved a modicum of happiness to see them through the veil. He routinely ignored the small voice in the back of his mind that said disappointment when one has been brought to the edge of despair is so much greater than if they simply remained sad.

It was a kindness. It made Tric uncomfortable to see children cry on the boat. He could ignore their shouts when he left them behind on the shore.

Run Aground

It's when you don't need an anchor. It's when the land crowds around you, uninvited, sinking its sandy fingers into your hull. And it crunches you to a halt.

Before – everything is chaos. There are voices screaming and shouting, roping flying, massive wheels creaking and turning and all you can hear is gigantic tearing of the sea in your ears. Bodies push past, shoving into your shoulders, not caring if you fall of the edge and go below the water- just concerned you might take them with you.

But all the turning and all the shouting and all the swearing in all the world doesn't stop the maelstrom happening inside your stomach when you hear that deathly crunch along the hull. The point where even the most battle scarred of men will turn grey, their deaths flashing before their eyes. Not swift and bloody via the cutlass, but waxen, starved and mad. A death which lives in the horrific lands, where atrocities against nature seem to scream sanity.

It is a death sentence like no other. Not the sudden cacophony of cannon blasts or the powder dry crisp of gunshots. Even the strange meat resistant  sound of flesh as it hugs the blade that surrouds it is preferable.

No one who lives life on the sea fears anything more than that sound. That shuffling, scraping, herald of rotting pain and depression. Because you can't un-hear it. There isn't a moment where you can subscribe to new beliefs and pray hopeless to new gods.

You can't go back and wish you had drunk more wine, stolen more hearts, cheated more men, or had more hot and breathless nights with mouths pressed furiously against your own.

You are faced with one future and one fate. With your crew and the sea and the silence.

Stuck.

And already you can see shadows of gaunt faces- staring.

Hungry.

Waiting for the mad games to start. 


Inspired by:  Sunday Scribblings: Grounded