Precipice
Amber was the light of the setting sun, reflected in the innumerable prisms of sea spray that colored the air about her. Her long blonde hair, misted by the salty spray that reached even her lofty perch, whipped about her in a frenetic cloud. Fifty feet below, the music of the sea echoed and crashed in glorious tympanic resonance upon a sheer, smooth wall of rock. And Mida stood atop that precipice, sea green eyes closed, feeling rather than seeing the beauty about her, the music within her answering the siren song of the sea. The wind echoed the sea's keening, tearing at the scrap of bloody cloth she used to hide her nakedness, whispering to her of her abandoned home at the bottom of the sea. On her perch, Mida tottered, torn, with her awkward legs grown weaker with longing, high above the frolicking swell of a vibrant ocean, painfully close to the taste and smell of the cleansing brine of the sea and yet . . . She had been a fool, no doubt, casting off the scales of her kind for no reason stronger than curiosity. How could she have yearned to feel the warmth of dirt in her toes and not guessed at the pain of rocks against virgin feet? Longed to breathe the salt-free scent of flowers and not foreseen the choking stench of decay and smoke in the land of men? Why had she not imagined real fear and horror and degradation awaited her among the land-dwellers? She shook her head. It was done. Time was short and she must decide what to do.
The sea beckoned. It was a world she knew, full of softness and strength, cruelty and gentleness. Every drop of the ocean teemed with the magic of life. She could be part of it again. She could feel it call her, offering to cleanse her of all the horrors she had found so quickly in the colder world of the landlocked, wash away those stains with its salty kiss.
Her fingers worried the tattered hem of the rough cloth she had found to cover herself—after. The taint of blood reminded her of her pain, her stain. She was pure no longer. He had taken it, stolen the body of one too new to movement on the land to fight back properly, leaving her, bloody and rent . . . and stained. And only the sea could cleanse the stain.
The sea swept up with unusual fervor, lacing the air with a mist of moisture. Clean. The sun had not yet set. She could be clean again and lose herself in the world of water, growing back the scales she had shed, becoming what once she was, clean . . . and wiser.
She had found him. When the horror of being raped had freed her limbs, she had found him, had shown him the folly of mistaking a female for prey. But she had not killed him. She could not kill for pleasure.
Her hands stretched up and touched her belly, touched where already she could feel the life beginning. What of the infant, an innocent tainted through no action of its own, only by the act of the man who had raped her? The child would never survive the transformation. The sea could cleanse his actions from her, but hers? Was it a choice she could live with, taking a life before it knew the world? What choice could she live with? She knew now the world was a horrible place.
Her eyes glanced at the setting sun, painting the sky about it purple and red. But, the world was a beautiful place, too, and wonderful. There were laughter and music and love and joy. And life.
Choose, she told herself. The sun had nearly gone and would take her choice with it into the sea. The stain must be cleansed and the sea was the only way she knew how. It was not her nature to destroy life, but there was no other way she knew. She closed her eyes, breathing, for the last time, the salt-laden air, feeling the spray of the sea she loved on her face.
So be it.
In arms made strong from years of fighting the sea, she lifted the trussed-up body of the man who had raped her, the man she had easily found and subdued once she had recovered her strength, had mastered her new body. He wept and pleaded with his strange sounds, but she could find no answering softness in herself.
So be it.
She looked at him coldly before she dropped him over the precipice. After he was gone, she closed her eyes, seeing his fear again in her mind's eye, listening to the music of his scream as he fell, feeling in her soul the crash as he was dashed upon the rocks and was washed away, washed clean by the sea. To be clean, the stain must be cleansed and she would not take the life of a child, half hers. The stain was cleaned with blood and brine, for her sake and the child's.
The foolish man had not realized that, when he had taken her, or that years of fighting against the sea made one unnaturally strong. He had made a poor choice in enemies.
The sun fell with finality, and she looked searchingly across the water, sighing with longing at a world she could no longer know. It had been her world, the world she had loved, magical, clean, caressing. She turned away and began to walk gingerly on her uncalloused feet.
This world was harsher, colder. It was lonely and dangerous. Mida glanced back for just one last look.
Then, Mida turned her back on the only world she had ever known. And entered another.