Of Earth and Stars

therealljidol

Isidora rose from her slumber and stretched, enjoying the ripple of the muscles of her body and the warmth of the water flowing across her pale green skin. She let out a yawn, which came out as a soft shriek, prompting a family of eels to bolt out from beneath the nearby rocks. She waved an apology and reached into the soft sand below, and grasped a jagged fragment of pearlescent shell which she began dragging through her dark, sea-stained hair. It resisted her efforts to lie straight, and instead floated around her bare breasts like am ominous cloud, drawn about by the waves.

Isidora sighed in discontent and wondered how the day might go. She expected it would go much like all the days that had come before, but she longed for company. With a single thrash of her tail, she sliced through the waves and towards the surface. She would have to find some form of entertainment.

Above the waves, the air was cool and misty, the morning sun struggling to reach a softly rolling sea. Isidora drew herself up enough to catch a steal of her reflection in the surface. She a had narrow face, with prominent, angular cheekbones and a small, delicate nose. Her skin was dull in the greyness of the new day, and her blue-black hair plastered itself to her neck and shoulders and clung around her coal-colored eyes. She shook her head vigorously to loosen her hair, then bared her teeth at the face in the water, running a long, salty claw over their surface to wipe away the detritus. Once satisfied with her appearance, Isidora turned in lazy circles to survey the horizon, before picking a path to the east, towards land.

Isidora was, as far she knew, the last of her kind. Time had once been much kinder to them, when men drew themselves across the sea in what amounted to little more than wooden buckets. Back then the ocean did much of the work, raising and slamming their confident little ships amongst its mighty hands. She recalled the excitement of watching them approach, safe within the embrace of the waves with her sisters. They marveled at the curious bodies aboard, soft creatures without a gill or fin of support, yet with the hubris to believe they owned the sea. Together Isidora and her sisters would swim, encircling the ships as they drew closer, raising their voices and singing. They floated and danced – at first playfully, partially submerged, as the water glistened across their bare torsos. The ships would follow, their inhabitants entranced and intrigued by the young, pale women in the waves, entangled by their song, and blind to whatever hurdles might lie ahead or below. It was never until their songs increased in tempo and volume, until they danced into a frenzy, and those ships crashed against the rocks or spurned, unfortunate, into the mouth of a sea beast, that the men realized their folly.

Isidora ached at the memories as she swam– she longed for the company of her sisters, the beauty of their voices in harmony and the wit of their intermingled lyrics. She missed, too, the attention and adoration of the men, however brief, before the ocean triumphed in overtaking them. She still sang on occasion, of course, but it was different now.

Isidora navigated to an empty space of shoreline– something much harder to locate these days– and found a broad, flat rock. The sun had risen in the sky, finally burning away the morning mist. Pulling herself up onto its surface, she rolled and stretched out on her back to soak up its warmth. Her hair fell away from her head and stretched across the dark basalt like soft seaweed. She left her hands and lower body in the water, allowing the waves to gently rap against her iridescent scales. A school of small fish tickled her long fingers below the water, nibbling algae from the webbed folds and the tips of her claws. She was delighted by their presence, and whispered an old blessing as they moved along, hoping that she might run across them again.

~~~

For centuries, her kind had thrived, but the years had wrought so much. The creatures of the land had multiplied, their ships numerous, their desire for the creatures of the sea seemingly endless. It began slowly, as the men learned to avoid their songs, and began to carry more powerful weapons that they launched from afar. They continued to hunt, without regard for balance. Their vessels slowly transformed from wood and pitch to steel. Coarse sails and rope were eventually traded for angry, thrumming engines and propellers that ripped through the sea, leaving a blood bath in their wake. The men cast larger and tougher nets that grew in size, which they dragged deep into the darkness to sweep up any and all life below. They caught fish and beasts of all sizes, taking what they wanted, and casting off their trash and tools without regard for what or who may become ensnared. They even built ships that held air and travelled to the darkest depths, fighting their wars under the silent roll of the waves.

Her kind, too, discovered the perils of their own powers. Once they had followed the call of the sea and lured a ship upon the rocks with their song, only to watch its wreckage release heavy barrels of the thick, dark oil that men had come to prize more than gold. With horror Isidora had watched the barrels leak, releasing the sticky substance that covered and choked out the life of everything it touched. She had never imagined that she would watch the sea itself burn, and yet the images were stained into her soul. The ocean had became both more violent and more quiet as time passed, as the ships took everything they thought may hold some value. Eventually, the sisters made a pact to avoid mankind as best they could. They drifted apart, each doing their best to safeguard the fish and creatures of the sea, or what was left of them.

One by one, Isidora knew, her sisters had been slowly lost. Her mind ran rampant with fears of what may have happened to them – whether they were drowned, entangled in the endless netting and stiff fishing lines that littered the waters, or if they had met a more gruesome death in layers of oil or fire. She had grown angry and bitter, and tried for several centuries to avenge them. And while she was occasionally successful in luring a small boat into an incoming storm, she found that most of the ships had simply become too large, their engines too loud, for their inhabitants to hear or heed her call song. With time she became tired of the chase, and of her anger, and quietly accepted the endlessly changing world.

~~~
 

As the sun rose higher into the sky, Isidora stretched her arms wide and slapped at the water with her tail, creating a cooling spray and playing with the waves. Bored, she scoured the surrounding rocks, hoping to spot a crab or other creature. She would even tolerate the gulls at this point. She collected seaweed that she draped across her breasts, an imitation of the coverings she had seen on the giant ships that sometimes passed through – ships the size of entire cities that carried men and women who danced drunkenly and ate constantly (surely reveling, Isidora thought, in their total dominance of the sea).

Soon she became aware of a ship – a smaller vessel, glistening white in the distance against the green-grey of the horizon and the stark blue of the sky. Her mind worked quickly. Such a small ship was surely intended for day-work or short trips, likely to contain a single traveler or perhaps a crew of two. Perhaps they were only enjoying the ocean, and would be inclined to wander off their path or take a dip. She watched and waited, narrowing her eyes as the vessel drew closer, gauging both her safety and her opportunity. She could only see one man aboard the boat, and he seemed engaged in his tasks. The ocean was already whispering to her, as it always had, encouraging her to sing her song, both of them hungry for a chance at redemption.

Isidora didn’t want to be reckless. And yet, her sisters fresh in her mind, the ocean in her ear, Isidora found herself straightening her pale green shoulders, her eyes damp and voice thick in her throat. Arching her back, she breathed deeply and raised her voice to the winds.

“Swim, then, until you can’t see land
Come hither, man, and take my hand
Swim, then, into the depths of the sea
Take my hand, come and swim with me.”

Isidora sat, perched upon her rock, the wind now lifting her wild dark hair to dance about her shoulders. She watched as the vessel drew closer, its engine now silent and following only the rise and fall of the waves. The ocean remained calm, though she could feel its tension running through her body. The sun sparkled across the water and her tail, splashing and playing tiny rainbows of light across their surface.

The man was not looking in her direction, but rather holding a clear cylinder attached to a weighted rope in one hand and writing with the other. He was surrounded by buckets of sand and algae. She saw no nets, no weapons.

The ocean was humming quite loudly through her at this point – they both had, after all, millennia of anger to work out. She found herself singing, again, and tried to sweeten and soften her voice, which had been unused for some time.

“Swim, man, until you can’t see land
Swim unto me, so we both are free
Come, sir, into my arms,
We can dance, my love, I mean no harm.”

The man continued about his tasks, and Isidora noticed that he had two small, dark bits shoved into each ear, connected to a small cord that ran down to his waist and inside his clothing. Isidora cursed lightly, her curiosity now at war with her sense of generational obligation. She slid to the edge of the basalt rock, folding and diving into the water, which was now cool against her hot skin. She dove beneath the waves to draw closer.

~~~

Isidora drew aside the vessel cautiously, her eyes barely above the water’s surface as she peered at the man. She had observed centuries of mankind, and found them quite predictable, and yet, they were always up to something new. She watched from the shadow of the boat as he dropped the weighted cylinder over the side, then retrieved it using a wheel. The cylinder was full of wet sand. Isidora watched the man sift the sand carefully into a bucket, counting carefully, and scribble words onto a curious stack of papers. He then returned the sand to the ocean, dumping the buckets overboard with a grunt.

Isidora speculated that this man was an observer, a knowledge-gatherer. Her mind wandered to the word spy but there was nothing aboard the vessel to suggest he intended harm. The ocean water had grown warm around her again, and she could feel its energy coursing through her. Still, she reasoned, he appeared to be trying to learn, which was something Isidora could appreciate. In all of her centuries of wandering the seas, she had always been excited to discover new things.

The man paused his tasks, removing the dark items from his ear. She could hear whispers coming from them, and she wondered if the ocean was also speaking to him. The thought felt blasphemous, and Isidora, still carrying the weight of her sisters, shrieked in panic.

Her noise startled the man, who stumbled from his ruminations and quickly leapt to the side of the boat, where they found themselves face-to-face. Isidora, her angular pale green face poking above the water, her crooked grey teeth bared, coal-black eyes angry and sad and a void all at once. And the man, with his golden brown skin and short, dark curls, his eyes and dark mouth round with terror and wonder. He started to reach towards her, a hand extended as he leaned against the railing.

Isidora shrieked again, longer and louder this time, then quickly ducked beneath the waves. She could feel the ocean angry around her now, and she was angry with herself. The waters turned turbulent as she spun and swam with all of her strength, the small boat rocking violently in her wake.

She heard the man call out, she heard her song singing in her ears, and she heard all the life of the ocean crying out all out once. She felt her tears stinging her face, tasted their salt as they mingled with the disappointed sea. Isidora sobbed, with only herself for comfort. Her thoughts grew dark as she wondered if she was truly the last siren, or if it could be said that there were any sirens left at all.