Into June's Eyes

Based on the prompt, “Beside the Sea- Mountain”.

Into June’s Eyes

By Daniel Brown

There’s a universal understanding that June’s eyes tell a thousand bonfires worth of stories that are harrowing and fanciful, hideous and gorgeous, dark and bright. She is heterochromatic which means her eyes aren’t the same color and she once joked each eye has its own individual timeline of stories. One captures the warmth of autumn and the other encapsulates the bitter and beautiful essence of winter; I ask about the autumnal one and she giggles before obliging. 

“Someone once told me”, she starts in a pseudo-hefty tone of voice foreign to her typically light and airy voice. “This eye is a cauldron for anything pretty and brown: bears unbothered in their natural habitat, fallen autumn leaves, and honey.” 

She snickers into her cardigan collar and slides her syrupy hand into mine, pointing outside with her free hand. “The autumn leaves, in particular, caught my eye. Pun absolutely intended there.”

As we step outside, every furtive movement is met with the crunch of autumn leaves underfoot and more falling around us at a glacial pace. June tucks her arm between the notch in mine and tightens her lock with a smile. 

“I love autumn so much. The crisp air, the leaves, of course, the atmosphere in general; hearing my eye evokes such a pleasant time is flattering.” 

We pause in front of two unoccupied tree stumps and grace them with our fashionably torn and frayed denim-clad bodies. I stare up at the vast expanse above us and inhale this atmosphere she’s going on about. I understand now and I’m grateful for the origin of her autumn eye but her wintry one is drawing my interest a lot more when I focus on it. 

“You see something you like?” she chuckles when she whips her hair from in front of her face and I hide my tomato face behind mine. She turns cherry in the face herself when she realizes that I’ve been staring at her winter-looking eye. 

“You want to know about this one, huh?” I nod, embarrassed yet no less intrigued to delve into her mind for this story. She stretches to crack a few stiff bones, tumbles off the stump and pulls me down with her into a generous spread of leaves. 

“I used to live in a town beside the sea which was called Bismuth Wharf after the gem I think. At least that’s how my dad told it to me and my mom wasn’t there to disagree because she was never there, to begin with.” June’s face droops a bit past her bandana before she allows gravity to return it back to the ground. “Not the way I remember things.”

She turns over to me in a fetal position with outstretched arms and I slink my way into her warm closeness. She nibbles my ear lobe and lines her gaze up with mine. “We were born into an endless curse; the founder of Bismuth Wharf, Callum Westermeier was said to murder a killer whale with a harpoon and the seas thrashed and cried against us at the end of every week as revenge.” 

“My dad, a fearless fisherman, didn’t care much for tales of the deep blue and sailed them anyway for a fresh catch.” June’s breath catches after a sudden break in her voice and she runs her fingers through my hair. “We needed to eat and he had to provide for that to happen.” 

“I was homebound because school wasn’t afforded to anyone but those directly related to the founder by blood and even then, the school wasn’t any bigger than half a townhouse. They learned Math, English, and Wayfaring which were the only subjects considered important in Bismuth.”

She stills her honey-colored eye and rolls the frost-colored one and we giggle. “I was considered special because of one eye resembling the brown floorboards and barrels across the wharf and the other resembling the sea that held what some said was the ghost of the killer whale slain by the founder.” 

June sucks in her lower lip and bites down until it leaves a tiny impression down the middle of it. “Being special in Bismuth got you ridiculed and my dad had to defend me daily from people labeling me witch, freak or ghost.

“We netted more fish when I was on board my dad’s vessel though in spite of hissing and teasing and that was enough to silence the citizens. Some of them even asked if they could borrow me for their own fishing adventures and my dad said no at first until big money came into the picture.” 

She sighs into my chest and my shirt feels the sting of her tears trembling down her face. “Eleanor Westermeier, the most eligible and sought after bachelorette/debutante in all of Bismuth Wharf found him attractive because of me. Prior to that, she didn’t as much as snort in his direction or call an audience with him much less visit personally.

“Eleanor was ten years his junior but she was stunning and he couldn’t resist her charm which meant he would easily fall for something as tempting as her wealth. He charged highly for my services then which she could afford without blinking.”

June takes in a healthy amount of air that she nearly doesn’t handle well and I space myself from her in order for her to breathe. “Thank you, love. Eleanor appointed me as her vessel’s oceanic expert and she netted as much fish as my dad received. My dad pocketed more money than he knew what to do with during the process and I soon was called to live with her in exchange for an outrageous sum of money.” 

Tears flow and crash against my chest as she grips my shirt and weeps without stopping. “I- I was forced to draw fish three hours a day and Eleanor, in return, provided me with the room her daughter once lived in. It was silken and golden and glittering and it made me the object of understandable envy.” 

Her voice shakes harder and her voice grows softer with each breath until she almost speaks inaudibly. “On the outside, people knew me like the princess of the sea and as cold fronts came through Bismuth, I was the ice princess of Bismuth Wharf. However, they weren’t aware of how little I enjoyed myself though I slept peacefully or attempted to. 

“Dreams of enormous fish piling onto Eleanor’s boat, The Westermeier Wind were recurring and painful. I’d cry out into my sleep for a dad who was no longer there and hadn’t been since he sold me away. I remember escaping through a slightly open window without alerting anyone, stealing money from my dad while he was asleep and getting far away on foot.”

She’s virtually run out of tears but she hasn’t stopped shaking until I wrap my admittedly stiff arms around her; each crackling bone causing her to giggle. “I used to wear an eye patch over this eye because it reminded me of that life in Bismuth; reminded me of my reputation as a cold, wintry princess but you told me something once.” 

June wipes my hair from my forehead and presses her cold lips against it. “You told me that the winter has a beauty about it most people don’t talk about and I mirror that beauty perfectly.” 

Her eyes sparkle in the sun like orbs of light and we share a soft, subtle kiss in each other’s arms.