The Dolphin of Mercy

[Toffee 1069]

I am nameless and amorphous, but the mortals call me Hamatsa. The sea is my domain. I ride the ocean currents, listening for the calls of the faithful. They leave me offerings at their shrines; seashells in sharp spirals tinged with pink and blue, driftwood bleached bone pale and worn smooth by the tide, carvings in what is supposed to be my likeness, but I have no face. This pleases me.

 

There is a mortal who catches my attention. Elf. The word rises from the depths—I do not know what it means, only that it is the correct way to describe her, this female mortal with long, tapered ears and skin like the underbelly of a brown trout, only darker. She sings to the lapping waves and lays my offerings before a huge painting on the side of the cliff face. No, not a painting. Shards of glass, wood, clay, and gemstones have been set into the stone, arranged in a careful pattern of blues, greens, and yellows. I have never seen anything like it before. Vines creep in to reclaim it, but the elf gently coaxes them away so that my likeness can catch the sunlight glittering off of the surface of the still and placid bay.

 

When she prays to me, I listen. She prays every day. For strength, guidance, a steady hand while healing. It is not onerous for me to grant these boons, so I do, and she continues bringing me gifts. I do not know how long this goes on. Years, days, centuries—it is all the same when the passage of time is nothing but a single raindrop in the wide expanse of the ocean. However long it lasts, it is enough for me to consider it a constant, a familiar rock in the tideline that the waves crash against and around, wearing smooth. She stops praying, and it is like the rock disappears, leaving a disconcerting gap the water must force itself to fill.

 

I return to her prayer site—the seaglass mosaic, I have heard the mortals who roam the seaside citadel call it. It is empty, but I wait. Moonlight and sunlight and moonlight again seeps through the surface of the water before she appears with two other elves. One has hair as red as coral and eyes like the glint of sunlight off of silver scales. The other wears a necklace of blue flowers, with white blooms threaded through the pink tufts of his hair. They are both smaller than her, my elf, but hold either one of her elbows as though keeping her upright.

 

She has never been anything but graceful, leaping between the slippery stones to reach my mosaic, or paddling through the warm shallows. Now she is shaky, unsteady on her feet. I am worried. Is this why she ceased her prayers?

 

She falls to her knees before my likeness, pressing her hand against my dorsal fin. I am shapeless, without skin or sinew or muscle, but I feel her fingers on my back.

 

“I failed you, Sulien. I should have saved you, but I couldn’t.” The voice that is usually so sweet with song is cracked and broken, hoarse, a seagull’s cry. “Please, forgive me.”

 

I am no stranger to grief. Mortals cast their prayers to the sea, begging for mercy from their pain, and I listen to their sorrows and soothe them, if I can. Healers, especially, raise their hands in supplication. The high, keening pain shivering across the surface of the waves to twine around me is familiar, and I know that this is her first death. The first time her hands could not erase the hurt, and whoever she was healing succumbed to their injuries of the flesh.

 

There is nothing I can do for her that the two young elves cannot. They rest their heads on her shoulder, her lap, holding her tight as darkness falls and the stars begin sparkling, bathing everything in silver. I leave them to their mourning and their prayer, watching from afar.

 

.....

 

She stands at the prow of a ship when next I see her, the citadel by the sea disappearing into the horizon. Beside her is a sandy-haired elf. They both wear headpieces—crowns, my memory tells me—like spikes of coral around their brows. The ship cuts through the waves but I keep pace easily. I will never tire, but at some point, the wind will give out. For now, they make good progress, and soon the land is nothing but a thin sliver behind them. They lift the crowns from their heads. Together, side by side, they sail for something in the distance without turning back.

 

Their new home is a shallow cave by the sea on a distant island, altered to provide the amenities of mortal comfort—carvings at the mouth of the cave, a door constructed of driftwood, the foliage outside clipped and tended to. Fishing nets drape themselves through the shallows, weighed down by heavy stones. My elf has begun work on a new mural, scraping away at the cliff face, helped by her fair-haired companion, who breaks off heavy chunks of stone with his fist. This is unusual for a mortal. They do not usually possess such raw strength. On closer look, his hand is not of flesh and blood, but stone, threaded through with bright veins of red. His segmented fingers vibrate as he strikes his fist against the cliff again and again.

 

I do not like this. It is unnatural. Huge slices of stone plunge into the sea, upsetting the water and the sand beneath, puffing up in great clouds, scaring away shoals of fish. I am happy to see him leave, even if it fills my elf with sorrow.

 

He approaches her on the beach, once again wearing his crown. He holds hers out but she gently pushes his hands away, shaking her head, and he places it on a nearby rock, instead. Water rolls down her cheeks as he leans in to press his lips to her forehead. Tears, I know they are called; saltwater rolling from the corners of eyes. They continue to fall long after the elf with hair like sand has pushed their ship out into the sea, boarded it alone, and sailed off into the gathering dusk. She watches until he is nothing but a speck, her hand lifted in farewell.

 

I never noticed the markings on her hands until this moment—intricate flowers the same colour of a warm sea at midday. Many elves who pray to me bear these same marks. It is soothing, watching the flowers shift across the delicate, fine bones as her hands move, grinding leaves and flowers in a small stone bowl, cleaning her daily catch, running her fingers through her hair to comb it.

 

Her life is a simple one, but she seems to relish in the smallest pleasures; sunlight on her upturned face, treasures washed up on the shore to add to her mosaic. I visit every time she dives for seashells in my honour and leaves them in a pile for the tide—for me—to reclaim. She suns herself on the beach, the mosaic whole and glittering behind her, and I wonder, How long has it been? Time means nothing to me, but the trees have grown taller, more gnarled, and the carvings around the edge of the door are worn smooth by wind and rain.

 

Long enough for her to tire of the solitude. When I next return, she has built a raft and sung her prayers to the sea, asking for swift winds and gentle waters. My brother, who lives in the free, wheeling spirits of the albatrosses on their long flights across endless oceans, guides her raft through the waters. Home is what she yearns for, but the seaside citadel she once knew has long since been abandoned, a cold and empty husk of what it once was.

 

Home, home, her spirit sings.

 

Home is wherever the elves she prayed, sang, loved, and cried with reside. We lead her there. I follow the vibrations of abundant faith, letting the threads of song and prayer show me a path to land. There will be new offerings in my honour, beneath the dolphin statue on the shore, and at the stone altar of a shrine replete with a shimmering seaglass mosaic. I leave my elf safe in the arms of the ocean, eager to see the new gifts the mortals have brought for me.

 

.....

 

She kept her crown. I thought she may have allowed the sea to claim it, but it sits across her brow, casting long shadows along the wharf and into the nearby ocean. I taste her sorrow; deeper than her first death, more bitter than watching her love disappear from their tranquil island. Her sadness is ancient. I know this, for like calls to like.

 

Another elf stands beside her, garbed in verdant cloth, her hair spilling around her shoulders, stirred by a breeze rolling in from the harbour.

 

“This was to go to my daughter, when she came of age.” My elf lifts the crown from her head and presses it into the other’s hands. “I can think of no one else I would rather have it.”

 

More tears. These mortals shed enough tears to fill another ocean. The centuries might have hardened me to their sight, made me brittle and sawlike inside, but their tears still strike me. Compassion. Mercy. That is what the mortals call it.

 

I like those words. I embrace them. She prays, and I listen.