Salt and silence

Salt and Silence

The waves seldom speak to me anymore.

They once brought whispers from distant shores, scraps of songs, sailors’ curses, and prayers to gods that never listened, let alone answered. I used to bathe in the shallows, finding sanctuary in the transparency of the crystal waters — no lies, no men, and no gods. For hours on end, I would press the lobes of my ear against the rocks, searching for memories lost in the ebb and flow of time. But now the waves just crash and retreat, a rhythm without message, a world that continues without me.

I trudge along the shoreline barefoot; my feet are callous, as are my palms, my face dry and blistered from the sun — but still, I walk because movement is all I have. The horizon never ends. The sky cycles through night and day, but I don’t pay attention to the change: sunrise, sunset, it’s endless, a torture manufactured to serve my discontent.

Behind me, my stone sentinels watch, hunched and twisted in postures that seem to mock life, as if carved mid-thought, mid-breath, mid-scream.

Some stand with outstretched arms, some crouch with their heads buried in their hands. There are hundreds; few have expressions, frozen in contortions of pain and terror — ancient gargoyles regurgitated by the earth. But most have succumbed to centuries of erosion, their identities worn down to blank stone and eerie silence.

But it’s the ones with faces I avoid.

There is something disturbingly familiar in the way their mouths hang open, in the furrowed brows and wide, startled eyes — as if they once knew something I’ve tried to forget.

As if, for a moment, they had seen me — truly seen me — and could not bear the shape of what they found.

Some say immortality is a gift, a boon bestowed on those who dedicate their lives to servitude of the gods and the morals they value, but I know better.

Immortality is solitude and silence that deepen every year. It is the unspooling of one’s self, stretched thinly over centuries until memories blur and your past life becomes a remnant of bitterness on your tongue, like wine left too long in the barrel, soured by time and left with a ghost of the sweetness it once held. What was once rich and prized becomes acrid and pungent. Names you whispered with love curdle in your mouth, emotions become dull with repetition.

The mortals never see it that way. To them, eternal life is a pearl — gleaming and unreachable, the prize behind every tale. But they forget that even pearls are formed from wounds — layers of soft resistance wrapped around something that should not be there.

I didn’t ask for this. No one ever truly does.

And the gods — they are not so generous as the stories make them. They give with one hand and take with the other. Their gifts are riddles, their blessings poisoned at the root.

So I endure. Not because I am strong, but because I have no choice.

I spend most of my days in meditation. Do not confuse it with religion or tradition; for me, it is merely a cleansing — not of sin or mistakes but of memory. Of noise. Of the ache when too many yesterdays stack on top of each other.

Some days I can almost convince myself I am part of the stone — a gargoyle, weathered but unmoving, carved into the cliffside. And then something changes, a crack in the rhythm, and I am forced to be reminded that I still breathe.

It was on one such day that I saw him — the sailor.

At first, I thought it was driftwood, discarded into the ocean like so many other broken things. Then I stepped closer; I saw the curve of a shoulder, an arm sprawled across the sand. A man — limp, unconscious, submerged in the sand. Another trespasser, a fool, not the first to cross my island, bound to suffer the same fate as the others.

I should let him die, let the waves reclaim him.

I moved to step away. But I didn’t. I couldn’t; there’s something different about him.

So I stepped closer. Slowly.

Each movement was measured, deliberate — not out of caution, but tradition. I have learned that this world falls into patterns. Men come. Men fall. Stone grows.

His body shuddered; he lifted his head, coughing out sand and salt water, and then… he looked at me.

Not in the way that most men do — with bravado, lust, or fear veiled behind ego. No, his stare was soft and natural; it was… understanding. But now his fate was sealed. I waited for him to turn… but he didn’t.

Even now, as I stand just inches away, the man remains flesh. No marble creeps across his skin. No grey bloom on his cheek. He breathes — shallow, ragged. A bruise darkens his temple. Salt clings to his eyelashes like frost.

A soft hissing coils around my ears, not threatening nor alarming but questioning. The serpents in my hair shift, uneasy in curiosity. They do not understand him. Neither do I.

One slithers down, brushing against my temple; I do not move to stop it. Their instinct is eons older than mine, woven into me with immense power; they would likely know what was to happen to this mortal.

It leans forward, tasting the air with its forked tongue. In compliance, I kneel down, submitting to its curiosity. I scan the man again — his complexion is dark, his body well-built but worn and decorated with scars — not a warrior’s, but a survivor’s. Perhaps he was a sailor or something less noble. His clothes stick to him, soaked in salt and sweat; with one hand is curled loosely around the body of an old, wooden lyre .

He does not speak. Instead, his other hand strays to the lyre at his side; fingers brushing the strings, a singular note drifted out before being swallowed by the wind. Then he began to sing. It wasn’t a good voice — a little hoarse from salt air, off-key — but still it was warm, like the phosphorescence of stubborn embers in a cold hearth.

I stayed where I was, my feet rooted in sand and shadow. He sang as though I were not there, or perhaps he had drunk one too many glasses of mead. There were no boasts in his voice, no demands, only the unprotected outpouring of a man who had been speaking to the sea too long and now found a listener.

The days that followed were strange ones. He made no attempt to draw near, only played when the light slanted gold over the waves, his voice carrying across the rocks. I remained in the periphery, a silhouette among gulls and cliffs, watching, listening. The snakes quieted when he sang, their constant shifting stilled into a kind of fascinated trance.

His songs were of life — tales of storms that took more than they spared, ports where the air tasted of cinnamon, a sister who embroidered sails. I felt the threads of his music wind down my solitude, my solitude like ivy creeping over stone.

I told myself it meant nothing. That I was allowing him to stay only because he did not look at me with the eyes of a conqueror. But the truth was more dangerous: I wanted the songs to go on.

It was on the fifth night that I approached him.

He sat by the rock pools, sharpening a rusted old knife, humming a soft melody. The tune caught on the wind, drawing me in with hesitant strands.

“You play well,” I said, my voice a low murmur.

He glanced up, startled, his eyes narrowing against the dusk. I had hidden myself beneath the hood of my robe, the shadows deep enough to turn my face into a shape without meaning.

“I’ve had worse audiences,” he replied, his mouth turning into a lopsided grin. “Care to sit?”

I did not. But I lowered myself onto a rock a few paces away.

He spoke easily, as though we had known each other longer than the time. He wept and he laughed, the two spilling into each other until they were indistinguishable.

Night after night, I returned. I no longer felt like a stranger; his presence was of a certain familiarity. I learned he was called Constantine — a name far too royal to match his figure — and that the scars came from time as a blacksmith, not the edge of a sword. He never pressed me for mine.

I told myself it was because I had given him nothing to suspect. No glint of fang, no flicker of serpents in the light of the fire. Just a figure in a hood, quiet and listening.

By the sixth night, I had almost begun to believe this could be something other than the familiar pattern — hunter and hunted.

But on the seventh, the music changed.

The chords sharpened, the rhythm tightened. There was swagger in his voice now, a kind of brittle pride. The words came clear.

“…and I will take her head, the serpent queen’s… bring her gaze in a sack o… lay it at the feet of kings… and claim my riches.”

I stilled.

The snakes hissed in unison, a sound like sand pouring through stone cracks. My fists clenched.

He kept playing, oblivious or pretending to be. Each verse was a knife, each boast a reminder. And in that moment I saw him for what he was — not the quiet survivor by the shore, but one of the endless tide of men who believed they could end me, claim me, turn my existence into their legend.

I stepped forward.

He looked up mid-song, his grin faltering. The strings fell silent.

“You should have kept to the other songs,” I said softly.

His lips parted, to protest, to plead — I do not know — but his voice never came.

The grey bloomed at his feet first, creeping over skin, extinguishing the heat from his body. His eyes widened in sudden, perfect understanding before they dulled to stone.

When it was done, he stood among my other sentinels, lyre frozen mid-strum. A new gargoyle for the collection.

The waves took his last note and returned it to sea.

By,

Tejas Gupta