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The tower is lonely tonight, as it always has been.
Waves drift in and out of the faraway shore as Sea Fairy’s hair shimmers in the moonlight, wide eyes turned towards the still, ethereal heaven. Nothing moves, nothing changes, the sky does not seem heavy with any kind of body tonight, it does not seem want to form with any kind of smile or kiss out of the fabric that forms its heavy cloak.
She puts down her hands. They ache. Her arms were never meant for outstretching with a sword in hand, but she will not give in. She can’t, she won’t, she shall not, no matter what. There was a time when this didn’t hurt, a time when her arms were free from the clutches of a cold blue sword, but she must not think to those times. She must not be wanting of those times.
Those days are over.
Will her lonely days be forever?
A shooting star falls and she gasps. She follows its descent so keenly, looking back up to the moon when everything is over, waiting.
...
...Nothing.
How foolish of her.
She should not be getting her hopes up again.
Not like she did yesterday, mistaking a historic meteor shower’s kiss upon the water as a sign of her return. A sign of the return of her gentle embrace. Of those shining eyes, those soft hands.
There is nothing today. Only hazy silence, stars hanging in the sky almost tauntingly. When she was younger, lonelier, her curse still fresh in her mind like an iced wound, she used to hold them in such disdain. For how dare they exist so close to the moon when she could not be. How dare they be able to drink in her power and hold her in all the ways she could not both physically and emotionally—how dare they be able to see her at a moments notice. How dare they. She could count on two hand the number of times she had held her in her arms, on one the number of times she stayed for more than a fleeting evening.
But she had cleared her head. Time had mellowed out her curse. Friends and those passing in the night, small children waving to her as she traveled the world—all of these things had made her life so much better. So much more colorful, clear, crystalline and glass-slippered—even remembering that fateful night. Even when she remembered that fateful kiss, those arms which pulled her into a golden light upon which dreams were made o—
Sea Fairy shakes her head.
She doesn’t want to remember that now.
...Or maybe she does? Ruminating on the memory for just a second makes her eyes glisten and her heart swell. But it’s only for a second until she thinks to how she wants more of those memories, how the same ones she keeps coming back to seem just as worn as she is of waiting.
Memories always prick her at the worst of times. They are turned over every day as she stares into the sky, but she sometimes wonders why some days they are easier to hold than others. Why is it so difficult to remember the good days when those memories should be full of happiness, of tender love? Those things were all she had sometimes in her darkest moments, but even those felt fleeting. Even those were sand that slipped through her fingers, shining moments dulled by some kind of force stronger and more competent than herself. Did she know how to put that force into words? That lingering weight in her heart, too light to be called dread but too heavy to be called folly?
The sea covered the entire world. It shouldn’t be possible to outcompete it. It should be able to swallow every word, every thought, everything possible in which ways to describe.
And yet the sky hung over her just as always.
A shooting star falls again.
Sea Fairy sighs.
This truth has long been buried within her heart, but it’s on nights like this that she wishes it was less a buried pearl and more a smashed vase. Beautiful in its mess, ugly in the cleanup, loved for the way shattered glass looks and cuts like diamonds. Blood always looks like little fish swimming lost against the current splattered on glass.
There are diamonds upon her cheek as her gaze falls seaward. Up here, the tower looks like a beacon in the night and yet it remains frozen, unlit. No guide will ever step up here, and she does not think herself competent enough to be one.
It is cold tonight.
It is always cold when she comes to visit.
She has not seen her in over a thousand years.
And tomorrow will be colder.
Sea Fairy sniffles, pearls falling to her feet as she forces herself to look up once again. She thinks of the fish as she reaches her arms up towards that opal in the sky, her friends in the boats and the nice ships who wave to her as they pass by. The ice beneath her feet hardens just that bit more as the images swell, crest into each other, as the waves at the base of the tower swirl into the ground floor, flooding them slowly and quietly as they soak every wanting surface, every refusing inch.
They would want to see her again. The children, their mothers tell stories about her and her love. The ships, whose crew pray to her for safety as they cross frigid waters, unknown ones, storm-struck ones.
The women just a seashore away, hands in each other’s as they witness the greatest monument to love the earth will ever see.
The tower rises again. Just that bit more into the sky. There is no hope that it will ever reach the moon completely, far from it, but every less inch she has to see her is in Sea Fairy’s heart every more chance that she will come down again.
The moon is warmer up here.
It is full tonight, the third time this month. It is so wonderfully blue against the twinkling stars, hanging from their astral strings. Their light is prickling, warmth fleeting just as soon as it hits her skin, but that’s fine. She can wait. She can wait forever she thinks, unsure of the statement and unsure of the notion, knowing that the abyss grows more tempting by the day no matter how full the moon is.
She can wait. Whatever is keeping her, she will wait for the day she never has to leave again.
This curse of hers will forever remain on her heart, but at least there is always the sky to fall into.
She hopes tomorrow that the moon will come down again.
Tomorrow will be the coldest day of the year.