The Tide Bemoans

[Valannor 6344]

 

♬♬♬

 

"Hear my voice, sing with the tide..."

The Light which guides. 

 

That was her name, translated in literal fashion. Elesul’annilir. Perhaps beautiful by Elven standards - radiant, even…

 

It felt hollow now. All of it did. 

 

She could still remember her mothers sitting across from her, teary-eyed and speaking words that she didn’t even hear. "We still love you." All these words evoked sorrow of a primal sort, as she tore from the house crying tears of her own, her boots digging deep into the moist earth beneath her feet. 

 

And now… she found herself here.

 

At the shore. Where she had found solace these past few months. 

 

She used to be afraid of the ocean; truly, she was. Back then, she hardly even knew what the sea even was, only that it was some vague expanse of endless blue, stretching untold miles across the plane’s wistful horizon. Once she was old enough, she had dared to poke at the sovereign depths…

 

And found herself calmed. The lapping of tepid waves upon that moonlit shore inspired wonder inside of her, in those years. She only occasionally told her mothers of her fascination, and even less often allowed them to accompany her. It was boring, perhaps, but when she needed to escape… There was no comparison to the song of the sea, no contemporary able to challenge the indomitable nature of the undertow. 

 

---

 

Ella wasn’t sure how long she had been sitting in her cozy hide-away, situated in some lonesome krag in the rocks upon the shore. It wasn’t much - a bed wrought of leaves and grasses, a small outcropping in the wall for books, and a spare change of clothes. But it was her home away from home.

 

She twirled the wrapping she held ‘twixt salt-licked digits, admiring the contents within; Ponderlot. Perhaps her parents forbade her from it at a young age, due to the toll it wrought upon her psyche, but the roiling storm and raging tides made the allure difficult - nae, impossible - to resist. She’d acquired an… affinity for the plant, and teenaged she may have been, that only meant such was to be expected.

 

Unruly. Rebellious… all things she had never been, yet that thought entertained her so. Why not something to take the edge off? To relieve that burden that lay upon her shoulders? Her tears had long since dried, leaving her with an emptiness ne’er felt by that oem’ii 'afore… it was scary, in a way, yet comforting all the same. She didn’t like feeling sad, or angry…

 

The emptiness was almost preferred, at this point. 

 

Flint upon steel struck, sending sparks onto the end of that wrapping, eliciting that oh-so-beautiful smoke she had come to admire; it was almost enchanting, in a way. And so, she raised that crudely-wrapped parcel of forbidden delight to her lips, taking a gentle inhale of the Druid’s Herb…

 

And she blinked.

 

---

 

Her eyes opened, and she found herself upon the shore. The rain struck down with fervor, and the storm clouds overhead crackled and roared in barely restrained fury. She was soaked from head to toe in short order, yet she didn’t mind. She didn’t know how fast or slow time progressed, rain drops occasionally freezing mid-air, or striking the soaked and coagulated sands with the swiftness of Sonnos. The sky rumbled and churned upon itself, cast aglow in a dizzying plethora of blues and grays, like some interpretive painting of horrific ilk, dizzying her and causing her to lose her sense of balance. Lightning danced and flitted about the distant horizon like shattered glass, the deafening booms and cracks causing that girl to fall to her knees, quaking before the majesty before her. 

 

She heard voices, multitudes, shouting her name. She paid them no heed, how could she? How could she possibly care for such words, when she beheld the raw might and power of the depths before her in all of their resplendent glory? The waves crashed and broke, rushing towards her and coiling around her. She saw faces in the water, untold dozens that she’d seen ‘afore yet never bothered to truly acquaint herself with. They looked almost disappointed in their way, almost… almost as if they pitied her, in her hollow and bedamned state. 

 

And then she was torn from the shore.

 

A riptide… she thought in that briefest moment as time resumed in a swift rush of salt and sea, dragged into the ocean with the recession of the waves, clammy fingers clawing at the sand as if that would save her. She clamped her mouth and nose shut - the best she could do in her addled state of mind, given the circumstances. Taken with the tide, she soon found herself surrounded by the abyssal blue of the depths, unknowing of how far she was from the rock-laden crags and snow-white sands of the atoll. She now saw faces she knew well; Ciliren, Briala… Her mothers.

 

“Ella, honey… we need to talk.”

 

She thrashed in the water, swiping at the faces as those words resonated throughout her consciousness, almost as if it would stop the memories from flooding back to her ‘twixt the deluge of brine and salted waters, pulling her down like the grasping claws upon the fingertips of a siren. 

 

“Briala and I…”

 

She opened her mouth to scream in momentary rage, her eyes widening as her lungs began to fill with thalassian ichor, coiling about her - cold and forlorn as that house upon the hill, the one that hadn’t been warm for months… She didn’t know where it had all gone wrong, in truth. How could she? She hadn’t even been graced with her sixteenth winter yet, let alone accrued the wisdom and knowledge necessary to comprehend it all. 

 

“We want you to know that we still love you…”

 

Her vision began to darken at the edges, the lull of distant creatures of aquatic ilk begetting slumber most pale of that girl, barely even a teenager. She remembered how Hareven, her grandfather, made those silly little whale calls when she was bored…

 

"Aspects, how I miss them."

 

She teetered there, caught between the endless black and shining blue in a waltz she could hardly fathom, dancing with the primordial might and tepid gentleness of the sea she had come to cherish so dearly, so sweetly. She swirled in the undertow, her consciousness fleeting and her lungs crying out in protest. She lidded her eyes, then, not bothering to hold back the rushing flood of memories that hit her in that stygian embrace…

 

Suddenly, she was thrown, a mighty rush of the aquatic tempest tossing her forwards and upon the shore she had been so swiftly torn from, prompting her to cough and sputter as the briney liquid vacated her lungs. She hacked and she puked, tears and snot falling to the sand below. The storm began to clear, in some small way, granting her soaked form briefest respite as, after a time, she finally found herself able to breath, uninhibited by that which formerly occupied her core. She fell to the sands, collapsing in a heap of sorrow and malaise. The sky shone brighter now, lidded eyes trailing about the contours of each and every cloud, and following after the streaking lightning that sundered the skies. She saw horrid things, yet made beautiful in her delusions. Creatures from the deepest trenches, their maws unhinged as if to consume one another, before passing each other by. Beings, beasts even, of slimy blackened ilk, or sporting radiant scales of cobalt hue. These, she knew, were a fantasy - for as addled as she was, that much she could differentiate. Her eyes began to close, the exhaustion holding her in gentlest manner, to guide her to sleep upon those starlit shores. 

 

That night, she dreamt of the ocean, and she ruminated on the light which couldn’t guide even those she cared for to a happier ending. She dreamt of better times that were, and mayhaps will be again… and most of all?

 

She dreamt of tidings that she knew would ne’er come. 

 

---

 

Those who sought to find Ella after the storm would find her soundly asleep upon the shores of the Atoll Grove, alive and mostly-well, yet soaked from head to toe in salt water. She might occasionally murmur unintelligible ramblings, or even less often, pleas for her parents simply to be together again. She shivered and shuddered from the cold of the night, though would awake anon, likely making her way back home thereafter in a slow trudge. She never much spoke of what she saw, nor of the herb that had prompted such sights and experiences...

 

She only spoke of the sea, when pressed for details. 

 

Spoiler

Just made this post to flex my writing fingers and jot down some of what my lil welf child is going through! Ella is alive dw, Ponderlot is just one hell of a drug.