The Sea Wept

That morning, the stark black of the mountains against the pale sunrise cut a line so decisive that for a moment she thought it might have torn a rip in the sky. 

            Iz may have stopped for a moment to admire the skyline it if she hadn’t had tasks to attend to. Sleep – or lack of it – hung heavily on her, and focus was difficult to maintain. As always, she knew it was best to just move on. 

            She had long gotten over the fear of starting off on wobbling feet down the rough-edged paths, chilly and cruel with the wind, but the waves beneath, churning and taunting, always urged caution in her. Sometimes she caught a glimpse of green within the waters and her heart lurched. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen fallen leaves or a field of grass. Such things were a novelty even before she was born, and non-existant by the time the survivors were forced to flee. The world she remembered was laid out in steel, and green was something of technicolor memories, made in a production studio. The waters liked to tease her, trying to get her to let them swallow her like they’d swallowed the lands and those who couldn’t bear to leave them, the people who’d had faith that the tides would change. Oh, they did. But not in anyone’s favor. Nature was a wild beast, one who’s flames had been stoked until it burned, setting the new world on top of a blanket of ash. The air still stung with a chemical twang, bitter and discontented. After the flames, the air was the second beast, the aftershock killer. 

No, nature didn’t much like being told what to do. 

            A brusk current clashed with the rocks and she was speckled with salty droplets. She froze and hugged the side of the path, the rocks skinning her hands, but it was better than meeting the ravenous waters beneath. Her chin stayed pointed upwards.

Though walking no longer scared her, she rarely looked down after leaving her cave. 

            The caves themselves were rare and she had lucked out by finding one, tucked away so that no one would see it from a distance and inconspicuous enough to appear vacant when she left each day. As far as she knew, it was the only reason she had survived this long. Along the mountain range she had settled in, she had not looked into lively human eyes for months. Maybe it had been years, as far as she knew. Time was so difficult when the whole world was steeped in gray. 

            Everything she had was packed neatly into her backpack, though she had never quite gotten used to carrying the weight. It has been awhile since she’d last gathered supplies; the last haul had been from a discarded sack she’d found next to a body along the shore. There hadn’t been much to scavenge, but it had been enough to keep her going for the time being. She didn’t know how much longer the flashlight she’d found would hold out for, or how long until she ran out of matches and couldn’t locate anything else. She was concerned, but not willing to seek much out until she really needed to. She was safest staying in what was familiar, in what she could control. 

Though, it was edging on the time of year when the winds stole away the air, merciless and cruel. She dreaded that time the most. Some nights were so cold that she felt like she was burning, and she imagined that the waves were flames and licked at her feet until they consumed her.

            Whenever the waters splashed too close, she would pause a moment before backing away. They would claim their place, she would claim hers. Her cave wasn’t so bad, after all. 

            Her daily trek to check the traps was pleasant in the sense that it allowed her to go numb to the consistent plainness around her. Sometimes she would carve stones with her small knife as she walked, and the days where the wind sneered and tossed her she kept her hands steady and focused. Today she left her hands loose but fingered the tight bands around her right wrist. They were frayed and faded and she picked at each thread, destroying them further. They hadn’t managed to fall off yet. She had always been a fidgeter, especially when she needed a distraction from monotony.

            Nothing changed. She always waited for it to, though. 

            As she approached the top of the mountain, beneath the peak - the farthest she dared to climb and the easiest place for her to set her traps - she braced herself for another empty haul and was rewarded with just that. It was better than returning to loose bones, knowing someone else had found your kill before you. Though, that hadn’t happened for months. And that was something that hit her in the gut: the unknowing of who, and what, was really left. 

She absently plucked a few stray feathers that were stuck in the weavings of the cage free and sighed. This time, she set it tighter, and turned to go back down. Going down was always worse than going up, and her paranoia was always worse after checking the traps. She hadn’t fished in ages; going down to the rocks was treacherous already and her bird traps worked fairly well as it was. The waters had dipped lower recently as well. She would have to map out a new spot, and she had no intention of straying from the little bubble she had made for herself unless absolutely necessary. Her first rule: move as little as possible. Exploration was a trivial risk, one she didn’t fancy taking.

She unpacked upon returning to her cave and promptly dug out her knife to continue her carving along the deep wall on the inside. Last night she had stayed up far too late, abusing the feeble life that was left in her flashlight to finish another image. The last few photos she had were fading quickly, wore with age, and she felt the frantic need to preserve them. Though they were smudged and scratched and torn, she held them close. Permanence. That was what she could give to her memories. And if she didn’t have them, she was nothing. 

Working along the line of her mother’s smile, her father’s strong shoulders, Iz scraped away at the stone until the light outside trickled into a pale, putrid yellow. Realizing night was quickly falling, she packed again in a haste and made her evening rounds.

Again, her trap was empty, and the coldness of the night was setting in, along with hunger. It was far easier for her to ignore the latter than the former, the sea breeze tickling and tossing her with a sigh, a shout, after every step. Her steps were quick and careless going back, depending on the surety she knew. She had no time for paranoia now. Getting home before dark was all she wanted. The sunset chased her on the way back, the shifting light approaching her heels at a threatening pace.

All these days and nights, all this decay and fading, and she still had no idea what the blackness hid.

When she returned, there was a man in her cave. Iz froze, her settling heart squeezing suddenly in her chest. He was dimly outlined in the light of the flashlight, which she had failed to pick up in her haste. Silently, she cursed herself, and bit her lip hard to hold in a scream. She had been so foolish for believing she was safe, believing her cave could be hidden. 

The man, she realized, was studying her carvings, his movements slow and stuttered like the scratchy drawings in a cheap animation. He was rough, disheveled, obviously he didn’t have anywhere to return to every night. The layers of his clothes were rumpled and torn, hanging off of his body rather than covering it. A wiry, messy beard obstructed the small part of his face she could see. His lips were parted, admiring her drawings. Her chest tugged with something she couldn’t quite pin down. Against her will, she sucked in a breath, needing to defend herself, the small plot and life she had carved out. 

It had been so long since she saw a human who wasn’t a corpse. He could be wild from the sea water, a cannibal. 

Or he could just need help.

What risks was she willing to take?

Her hands went to her wrists, yanking at the fraying bracelets violently. Before she could ponder where to start, the man shifted and seemed to notice her, as he drew back, farther into the corner of her cave. He was no longer in the light, and though she knew the whole space of her cave, she felt as if she’d lost him, and the panic set it. 

Iz held up her hands, still unsure of what to do, how to communicate with someone like that. Though he was now almost entirely in the shadows, she noticed in the murky gray that he had her blanket clenched between his fists, wringing it slowly, like her fidgeting. It looked small when he held it, barely dragging on the ground. She let him hold it, at least for now, and swallowed as much of her fear that she could. 

“Hello?” she tried, searching for even a shred of humanity. He said nothing and moved like he’d been shocked, startled, and she didn’t know if she had the means to soothe him. She didn’t know if she wanted to.

“Ok, ok,” Iz said, to the man and herself in an attempt to calm the both of them. Her voice seemed to do nothing more than panic him further, and his jerky movements were wide sweeping. She moved closer to the edge, as close as she’d dare, and didn’t look down at the water. Forcing herself to be quiet and still, she held out her hands again.

Instead of approaching, she let him take the first step forward. 

Finally, when he did, she saw his face, his eyes, ghostly in the dregs of sunlight. 

And she saw that his eyes were only wild, those of an animal. He had been walking like one too, she realized. Distrust shocked her with cold and she realized that there was no man there, not any she recognized. Her shoulders stiffened. 

They were only looking at each other, assessing, and in Iz’s case, determining what to do, how to handle this.

She was about to ease her stance, allow him to leave by himself, to find trouble on his own since he seemed more than capable of that. Before she could relax her muscles, let her arms down, the man stepped forward and reached out and Iz found herself diving for the flashlight. The movement must have frightened the man because then he was moving too, arms flailing and body tumbling. She clashed with the stone ground, the skin on her arm tearing, but she ignored the sting and scooped up the flashlight, gripping it like it was all she had. Her vision swam but she heard the man approach her, his outline waving through her sight, his eyes burning white, uneven and heavy footsteps echoing on the stone. When she had made it to her feet, he was near enough and approaching fast. She bent her knees and readied herself to strike. Swiping back up just as the man was about to reach out to her - to touch her face or hit her, she didn’t know - she brought up the flashlight and smashed it over the man’s head and he fell as bits of broken glass and plastic shattered against the walls in a brilliant yellow and orange rain that glimmered in the sunset. 

Iz faced the luminous horizon once the man’s body was still on the ground. Beautiful, in a way it hadn’t been for a long time. The horizon was kissed with fire, and she stood before it, facing the whole world.

The man’s body was still but it filled the whole opening of the cave. She knelt to meet him and reclaim her blanket, and his eyes were open and utterly blank. Iz shuddered and avoided them as she moved her blanket out of his grasp.

When his fist unfurled, one of her carvings clunked on the stone floor. The rough heart she had carved first, reminding her of a cheesy decoration in her grandparent’s house. Usually, she carried it with her, but lately she had been leaving it behind. She picked it up and roughly shoved it deep into her pocket, selfishly concealing it, though the man was dead. 

The body was massive, but it was near enough to the threshold that she rolled it a few times to reach the edge, and with one more push the wind took it. The waters devoured it happily, splashing playfully against the rocks, glimmering in the last of the sunlight. 

Sleep came easily, even on an empty stomach. When she awoke and left for her morning rounds, the waters had risen to greet her along her path, lapping up against her feet and legs, their wants palpable in the salty air. 

She walked on, wondering how she’d replace her flashlight anytime soon.