Anna’s eyes shimmered with soft beauty in the musky night, from up where she floated in her tower.
Two walls of ivory-flicked shale rose from the depths in the distance and high above where her tower’s height reached, curving like two lids across the building’s iris.
It was within these walls that her people and her father’s people lived. In the coal dark night, malta glows glistening from the inner cavern dwellings comforted and warmed her. The lights from their warm malta kindling seemed to waltz from place to place, glistening the leagues between her and all that her eyes could see.
It was here, while her thoughts drifted in this soft, soothing trance, that something of interest caught her eye.
Somewhere off in the depths, below her tower’s rising walls, a pale albino boy hugging a dolphin’s back skimmed Meridia’s floor. She could just faintly hear the dolphin’s calls in the distance. This bizarre pair was followed by a massive fluorescent fish and a man, whose skin appeared to be that of pitch night.
But both entities were impossible. Neither could exist.
The first was impossible because seeing a dolphin so far down in the Meridian depths was unfathomable. Dolphins couldn’t breathe for long without the transparent fluid which was so abundant above and close to the ocean’s crest. And there was none to be found in the depths which were home to Meridia, certainly not in enough abundance to sustain such a creature of beauty as the dolphin.
The second because…
…because no man that she had ever heard tale of bore skin the hue of pitch night. No man had flesh of black.
Glimmering light spilled out from the East Shale Wall’s doorways and windows, shimmering like shell gloss across the sands and coral where these travelers swam. She wondered if her sight and thoughts were deceiving her or if this duo of travelers was actually real.
Whatever the two were, one thing was certain. They were beautiful. The pale boy flung his thin arms in wide motions while puffing out his chest as though speaking to the other man, perhaps blustering on about the city’s walls or tales that he had heard of things within them. The boy’s left leg tightened to the dolphin’s side as they swept down to the ocean floor. His arm swept below where she knew a snail garden lay, his fingers gently releasing something small in amongst the kelp and snail domain.
Rising from the downward swoop, a long shaft of coral stretched forth from the boy’s fingertips and plunged into the sands below, spewing forth a tail of whipped sand in a playful, swirling breeze.
This night parade of two, the pale boy clasping to his dolphin companion and the stern-faced, dark-skinned man with his large fluorescent fish beneath him, glided stealthily along the East Shale Wall, illuminated in malta light as they drifted from her sight.
Long, ruby locks flowed across her youthful form and into the currents’ breeze as she floated for moments after the small parade’s passing, her thoughts lost completely on what the presence of these two unusual travelers might mean.
She had looked upon the two from a distance, it was true, but still the young boy’s face played in her mind. There had been something lively in his smile and in the way that he frolicked in the currents that awakened something in her. What that thing that gave her goose bumps could be though, Anna could not say.
She yawned as a cool breeze of water wove over her. Lazily, she glided with her ankle and wrist fins over to her place of resting and curled up in a warm cover of prepared whale skins, kelp strands and various minerals which would keep the warmth in as dreams wandered in her mind.
Her green eyes softly shut as reflections of the ocean birth’s stars sprinkled a mind-enthralling tapestry within her thoughts.
* * *
With a wide swerve of his arm Maanta waved to Sift and watched as the man jetted on the back of Lola toward the glowing coral potions cove along the East Shale Wall. When morning arose he would check on this new friend.
"Ooooahooo," Maanta sang to Archa, telling her to go and rest ahead of him in their shale-wall cove dwelling. The night was still young with more exploring left to do.
Warm, crimson light from the East Shale Wall draped amongst the darkness, reminding Maanta of times long past as he cupped the cool waters in his webbed fingertips. This light let his thoughts wander away to other days, days when his mother still was alive.
When he was a child she would wrap him up in kelp and cradle him in her arms while drifting in the currents next to their own little stone malta pit. She would hum or sing a lullaby to him while carefully tracing his hair with her fingertips. Sometimes if he was lucky she would tell him tales of long ago or make up tales from the minds of different creatures that made their homes nearby in the Meridian sands.
How nice it would be to feel that warmth again and to relax in the glow of his mother’s own malta pit. Maanta could almost smell this past like a sugary flora scent wafting just past him in the drifting currents. It was as if this scrumptious memory could be found beckoning from the closest cove home and yet was out of reach, forbidden for the eating.
Daydreaming again, Maanta realized as he exited from his thoughts and memories, and the daytime is nowhere to be found. How bizarre is it when you find yourself daydreaming when the rest of the ocean finds itself in slumber? The rest of the world just doesn’t know what it’s missing.
Swooping in one brisk, fluid swirl, Maanta skimmed the gargantuan cove wall of dwelling places towards his final destination before night’s rest would be allowed to overtake his body.
Warm, spiraling currents wafted across Maanta’s fingertips then wove about his lips as he clutched on a stone windowsill, eyes glimmering with intrigue, peering within the shale crevice home of the wise elder, Amaranth.
Would tonight be the night, Maanta wondered, in which the curiously kind, old man would finally awaken magical serpents dwelling down beneath the depths of Meridia or possibly summon forth apparitions from Meridian ages long past?
For many a night passing Maanta had peered upon this very dwelling’s windowsill in the hopes of viewing things such as this. He had overheard many a tale while in Meridia’s marketplace of Amaranth and of his magical doings but as of that moment, all which had been awarded Maanta for his sneaky patience were malta-hued nights in which the old man etched with his corundum claw upon various kelp parchments. These were mixed with the occasional night of Amaranth irrationally babbling in song.
Are the tales of Amaranth’s doings just that, Maanta wondered, elaborate myths brought to life by mis-told recollections?
He had overheard tales of magical light blooms forged instantaneously, brought about by one simple drifting of the old man’s fingertips. But the only blooms of brilliance Maanta had seen within Amaranth’s dwelling were sand blooms rippling through the room as kelp parchments unraveled for Amaranth’s reading.
Why does the man have to be so bedamned boring? Maanta found himself pondering as his sight drifted towards the shelvings and various other unliving inhabitants of the room. Glimmering potions lined the carved-out stone shelving, shimmering their vibrant, reflective glows all over the room and tapering off into the night.
Hovering above a slate table in the room’s center, with his back to Maanta, Amaranth scribed a passage on tender, fresh parchment. Life shone from his eyes in gentle blue sparks. He knew the young one was there, watching in the murky night. Smiling, he smoothly soothed crimson chemical soils in his palms.
Amaranth swiftly swam upright, fists clenched, and flung his fingers free. Vibrant red heat-blooms burst from his palms, sweeping about and fizzling. Forbidden fluid bubbles scattered, webbing amongst the room and collecting along the shale cavern’s ceiling like fish eggs to a coral wall.
Shivers ran up Maanta’s spine. What was this thing which he had seen? The stories must be true.
A single warm ash speck from one of the blooms drifted as it cooled, still barely lit with red heat, out Amaranth’
s shale window entrance and Maanta clasped it in his palm. It faded to pure gray ash as Maanta stuffed this remnant of the beautiful vision in a small folded-seaweed pouch.