Stormy Mirror

Banks and I are crab-fishing, but for the most part we just find apple cores, beer bottles and some tiny weird sticky jellyfish. From a deckchair, Angus shouts something at us.

The wind is too strong to make out what, but Echo, bless her, runs to relay the message in her repeated round.

The jellyfish is dead, so the three of us bury it in front of the ocean, but Dante appears and has a better idea. Angus is asleep and Patricia is off paddling with Conrad at the other end of the beach.

We stealthily bury the dead jellyfish under Angus's deckchair, hoping that the warmth of the sand might revive it long enough to sting him in the foot. Instead the ocean washed Angus feet before the immortal jellyfish awoke.

I look up from the window of the people carrier, my brothers and sisters aren't happy, my Uncle Ian is busy driving, and Aunty Jo is hushedly talking to someone on her new flip phone.

I imagine what it'd be like to be an ocean: neglectful, apathetic, destructive.

"What world do you live in? Angus they're away with the fairies again."

"What do you mean? Patricia" I smirk.

"For the last time, it is Mum," Patricia counters.

The holiday is over.

Back at the holiday-let my treehouse is leaning. The sea breeze has eroded it. I rush back to my treehouse, and I can already hear my parents shouting. Over the crashing of the ocean I don't have to pretend anymore.

But then; I am forced to cling on whilst gales take me and my treehouse out into the ocean.

In the beginning this island which I now call home was calm. I live on an island close to where the Pacific Mother meets the Atlantic Father. The oceans were too tired fighting each other to remember that I was the cause of their fighting, but they have been drinking from the sky again and soon roar into life. I don't understand. What rights do the oceans have that they stop me from returning?

Toxic oceans surround my island identity: waves protecting it currents, from me - from change. In the distance my brothers and sisters are kept on one uniform island. Their unactioned cries for help: specks of sand in the distance. My protectors, the oceans keep us apart. The oceans do not provide my food, I grow my own fertile choices.

Every time I try to rescue my siblings from their coercive currents I am knocked down, pushed back by the tides of the Atlantic to the comfort of my island.

I shut myself away in my treehouse dreaming that the oceans will dry up.

A storm wave reaches into the island destroying the treehouse, so that by the morning tired and cold, I resolve to build a boat from its remains, and I set off by midday. I leave my zone of comfort, which is no longer safe from the wrath of the oceans. I make it as far as the dormant Atlantic's edge, before the Pacific upon sensing my presence, stirs the Atlantic and they both crash arguing over whose fault it is that I am not on my island. These stormy arguments throw me out of my boat. An angry ocean pushes me down and I am lost under their unfamiliar waters, questioning which way is forward.

I drown slowly in their anger. Screaming back at them, but it's too late. I have let the anger in, and it becomes me.

I wake to find myself underwater but breathing now. I swim to the surface to find my siblings, my island, sustenance, anything. The sea is calm now. I surface, but my head shakes, and I throw up below the surface. I cannot breathe. I try again, but I still cannot breathe above the surface of the sea.

So I swim back with a new ease looking for my island. I trace back my journey through the ripples of disturbed waters. I recognise the remains of my boat partially submerged upon its shore. I try to return, but I cannot. The seas let me view my past from a distance, but I cannot feel the comfort of its substance. From here the previously angry cries of the oceans sound different, almost in union with my breathing.

The thought disturbs me, and I commit myself to returning to my island one last time, the thought suffocating my mind. I knew it would happen, but I am doing it anyway. I lay on the shore looking at the stars, my mind with a foggy and confused purpose. Here is where I die.

An unrecognisable, but familiar angry ocean rises over the entire island, washing me and my past identity away.

It is light now and I am submerged once again. I hear the melodious tones of the oceans in unison. I am reborn? The ocean's anger has turned to a sense of protection, and love? I am confused, returning to the surface I find I can breathe again in both toxic spheres, seeing my siblings on their island of community.

I hear a siren and I am mesmerised by a rainbow on the ocean waves.

The toxic blood of my parents still circulates through them, inheritance of a bygone era.

"Get back!"

They do not listen to the ocean's protests, but move away from the edge of their island to a fortified position.

The sea is my home now, but not theirs. They could be washed away. I half-heartedly wish you two would try.

It is over. I leave my brothers and sisters playing in the garden. My treehouse is in pieces, but my parents accept me. I wobble for a minute unsure of my footing. There is an odourless yellow fog in the garden and then I am on top of someone.

"Here have some water, you've been out there far too long. We've come to an agreement and you mustn't be upset, but if you're to stay with us you will not set foot in that deathtrap again." wheezed Angus.

"Deathtrap?" I hear sirens again.

"Your treehouse, you should play more with your brothers and sisters, let them get to know the real you," coughs Patricia.

I turn. My treehouse remains smoldering. Banks, Conrad, Dante and Echo are all gathered near the fire crew at this end of the garden.

"What happened?!" I demand.

A sound burst my eardrums and I found myself dazed. The stump of the tree remained intact, but my brothers and sisters had been scarred for life as the lightning had struck a second time, discharging through the tree and jumping along the water source to, along the firehose and into what was now a very orange fire engine.

Echo screamed and ran towards the house, Dante fell backwards again, and again. Conrad bravely went to pick up Dante, and Banks just stood there over a body.

"Get back!" Collins screeched at Banks. "Someone call another ambulance, cordon off this area now."

I went to run to the window, but Angus grabbed me tight and Patricia was instead running to pick up the rest of her children.

It is twenty years later, we no longer holiday by the sea, but when I'm feeling nostalgic I run along Borth beach, I do not have to travel far. I let the ocean waves wash over my feet and the vastness of the sea wash over my mind.

With the death of the fire officer, who was my Uncle Ian, Banks went back into the closet for sometime. It was not just my identity which was washed away but, her supplies of resistance against a somewhat accepting family were also destroyed in that fire. There was no reason for that lightning to hit twice, but it had. Uncle Ian had been Bank's only confidant outside of me.

After Ian's cremation, he had remained at Aunty Jo's house. On Sunday, just gone Echo, who goes by the name Evanna, snuck into Jo's house to give Ian a proper burial-at-sea. The whole family had known his wishes.

Banks, Echo and I buried Ian in a spot under a deckchair.

"What would Ian make of this?" Banks asked.

"Long may he stay in our hearts." Evanna, echoed the sentiment.

I raise my seventh glass to the ocean to Ian, and the immortal jellyfish. I hope they can co-exist. At least long enough to see Banks become confident enough in herself to be authentically her. I wonder again about the immortal jellyfish. Our naivety was really showing that day. I laugh to myself. I wonder what the ocean would say to being called such.

I wonder what my relationship with Banks tells me about my relationship with myself. Back home I look in the mirror and imagine what it'd be like to be an ocean. How would the ocean imagine me?