Beneath the Glass
Some find themselves only after they are lost.
Walking along the surf tonight, I find myself drawn to the wet sand and the trapped pools of water that shimmer in the dim light. I lean in to see what creatures were caught when the tidal forces shifted the oceans edge. I am caught at the sight of a round creature drifting in the water.
She hovered there, just beneath the glassy surface of the moonlit tide pool, elegant and sly, an impossible grace wrapped in rippling skin. Her eyes, dark as shipwrecks, met mine. They didn’t blink. They didn’t have to. I was already caught.
Eight arms moved like whispered secrets—fluid, hypnotic. Each gesture tugged something loose inside me. Something I hadn’t known was tangled.
I leaned a long time on driftwood, the only divider between our worlds of up and down. An accidental barrier between us. She pulsed closer, curious—or maybe I only imagined that.
Then, without thinking, I climbed over the dry wood and tumbled in.
Down, down I went, into those briny depths.
At first, there was silence. The kind that hums just beneath your skin, like pressure or prayer. My clothes clung heavy, the salt biting. But I didn’t care. I was sinking, toward the slow unfurling invitation of expressive arms.
She shimmered in violet and blue, skin rippling with thought, with mood. One arm brushed my cheek—not by accident. Not in this place. Her touch was delicate, then sure. She pulled me gently deeper, past the kelp curtains and coral chandeliers, through corridors of light where fish blinked like stars and sand whispered secrets in forgotten tongues.
The water grew warmer the farther we went. This is unexpected. Where is the cold oblivion of Davy Jones' locker?
I forgot how to breathe, and then remembered again—but differently. Through her. Around her. As if love itself had taught me.
In her garden of shipwrecks, she showed me wonders. Broken bells still ringing. Bottles filled with moonlight. A compass spinning in circles, pointing always toward her. When she moved, the ocean parted. When she stilled, time collapsed.
I do not know how long I stayed. There were no clocks in her world. Only the rhythm of tides, the pulse of phosphorescent dreams, and the stories she etched into the sand with her elegant arms.
She never spoke aloud, but I heard her.
In memory. In marrow. In the spaces between my heartbeat.
She showed me what I never knew to seek.
Not just beauty, but meaning. How everything in the sea was connected, woven into a great trembling net of being. How even the smallest shell hummed with purpose. How grief moved like currents, and joy like bubbles—rising, always rising.
I no longer hungered the way I once did. My old world—the dry, angular one of clocks and corners—faded like a ship on the horizon. Down here, everything curved. Even time.
We danced between volcanic vents and sunken ruins. She taught me to read the language of light. To taste stories in the sediment. To listen to silence without fear.
But the deeper we went, the more I felt the pull.
Not of the surface—no, I would have stayed—but of something unspoken between us. A current shifting. A thread fraying. Her eyes—those two perfect galaxies—began to look beyond me.
One night, or whatever the word is for night in a world without sun, she led me to a hollow at the base of a reef. Inside was a mirror made of mother-of-pearl, polished by centuries of patience. She motioned for me to look.
And I did.
I saw myself. Changed. Not quite human anymore. The sea had claimed its portion. My skin shimmered faintly. My eyes held bioluminescent thoughts. But more than that, I saw what she saw: that I was not meant to stay. That love, in its truest form, releases what it cannot keep.
She wrapped herself around me one last time—an embrace I felt with my soul—and carried me upward, past all the places we’d wandered, until light filtered down again from the world above.
She left me just below the surface.
When I broke through, gasping, it was night. A full moon stared back at me. The stars did not blink like they did in her watery world.
I crawled onto the shore. Alone.
But I carry her still. In my breath. In the rhythms I now see in everything. The trees sway differently. The wind speaks in octopus tongues. And sometimes, in dreams, I return to her garden of shipwrecks, where time waits in the shape of an arm extended… but not reaching.
Not yet.
#story #confession #osxs #100DaysToOffload #Writing
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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