The Sea and The Sky

[StingyParrot 1595]

 

 

The Sea and The Sky

 

Zahel liked to watch the ocean. Sometimes it crashed against stone cliffs, wind howling as it split around rock. Sometimes it was gentler, lapping against pale sands with a refreshing chill, waters ruffled by the passage of invisible air currents. But dearer to the Vectran was when he was out upon its surface, feeling waves pass beneath and around him as he ventured across its infinite, ever-changing plane.

 

He was out there now, off the eastern coast of Azuras. Caurost’s rocky bay was a fuzzy line in the far distance, and the normally chatty elf was quiet, contemplative as he usually wasn’t, alone with the gray-blue waters below him and the pale-azure skies above, wispy clouds streaking across the vault of darkening sky. Orange sunlight limned the edges of rippling waves and his small double-rigger boat, the sun itself drifting low along the horizon. 

 

The Mali’ame’s fishing trip had been a successful one; silvery-scaled fish filled baskets beside him, and he’d long since stowed his nets and rod. Now, as sunset trailed towards night, he unclipped his fishing knife from his belt - the only source of metal on his body - and laid it to one side, leaning against his boat’s mast and closing his eyes.

 

Zahel drifted. He heard the wash of waves, felt them lapping against the side of his boat and sending faint vibrations up to the mast he leaned against. He felt their rhythm - slow and ponderous now, yet titanic in their omnipresence. The very currents below him, he knew, stretched for thousands of kilometres, guiding the paths of marine life so diverse that they put to shame even the greatest cities he’d visited: Rittersburg, Alduun, Alba.

 

He listened to the wind then. It was brisk today, enough that he’d closed the sails to avoid drifting, and deployed a sea anchor for the same purpose. The wind seemed to whisper past him, carrying faded scents and sounds away from Azuras and out, out into the indeterminable places beyond. Sometimes, when a new wind blew towards the continent, Zahel liked to imagine what lands it had passed. Perhaps Vectra, his homeland, or maybe the old continent Aevos, lost to Orsathiael.

 

Zahel focused on his breathing; taking in lungfuls of that drifting wind to the beat of waves drumming against his boat. In, out, in - hold - , out. . . He strove to attune himself to the sky and sea, to become a medium for their eternal rhythms. In, out. . .hold. . .in, out, in. . .

 

 

When Zahel opened his eyes, he saw himself as the horizon-line between ocean and sky, the point in-between the realms of wind, water and life. He could no longer hear his breathing; rather he heard the wind, rushing past in a sweeping melody sung in time with the rhythm of water. Air currents swirled around him, gilded with teal light, and mist the color of seafoam danced in thin swirls about his limbs. There - he’d achieved it for the first time. Resonance. Harmony.

 

[KeiaTypeBeat 3277]

Spoiler

I really love this sentence in particular: 

 

"He felt their rhythm - slow and ponderous now, yet titanic in their omnipresence"

 

Really good post, Stingy. I'm happy this is the first thing I read today c:

Spoiler