Chapter Text
Sea doesn't pick favorites, a man once said, face now long forgotten and voice twisted to the point of pointless babbles.
She doesn't remember why he said that, only that he did. She doesn't remember who this man was to her, only that he was vaguely familiar. His gaze was distant, looking straight through her instead of at her, even when he tried to comfort her in some way, and she knew he was tired. His voice felt grave, harsh and vindicated, flat and disdained, all at once.
He said it like a mantra, those words. She couldn't tell if he told it for her or for himself.
Perhaps he was even right about it, she thinks. The sea that man talked about truly never did so. It was just yet another natural force to keep an eye on, track its level and look for storms. It could not decide who to save and who to kill, because to decide is to think, and to think is to live, and a giant body of saltwater could hardly be called alive in that way. It was a place to be, not a person to talk with.
She knew that too. It was a fact, after all. A truth. Something that you can't change.
She looks at her crystal see-through hands, noting specks of foam and bits of coral and some sea grass floating in them. Her head cranes up and up and up and up, until she sees the blues of the sky without any clouds. She doesn't breathe relief, none-and-all-seeing eyes drinking in the colors of charcoal black of the not-yet earth, barren of thoughts and dreams and hopes and desires and movement and life.
There wouldn't be any, she knows, not for a long time more. She holds herself upright, body falling and pumping itself back like a fountain, hair steaming down her back like a waterfall it is. There wouldn't be anyone but her.
She'll be alone.
Something bitter and ugly and poisonous starts swelling inside her with that thought. It's killing the future life in her vastness, suffocating them in her grief, and she feels the underwater volcanoes readying their burst in tandem with her. There wouldn't be anyone. Anything.
She'll be alone.
A sob escapes her, and the water making her chest warms itself to a dangerous degree.
She'll be alone.
Her hands clench on themselves and she bows down, bending in half, water-curtains splashing forward. More sounds make it through her throat and she grabs her silky hair made of nothing but water and debris, choking on her cries, pulling it apart. Her vision does not mist like it should, and the liquid dripping down into the dark abyss of the deep ocean is not her tears, but her own body struggling to maintain a form.
She'll be all alone for eons to come.
The world shuddered and she screamed.
Her scream, layered and loud like a storm, was echoing for a long time into the empty world for no one to hear. It sounded so desperate, so longing, so grutall, that everything exploded with that noise, volcanoes erupting and tides shifting, wind howling with tornadoes and cyclones. The ground tears itself apart with it, drawn by shifting the riptide, colliding with other pieces, and the entire world mourns with her for something it had yet to experience, young and sensitive as a mere child might be.
Her screaming does not lessen for days, weeks, months, until all she knows is Noise. It shifts through despair, disbelief changing tones with rage, drowning and drowning and drowning everything inside.
She doesn't know when she stops.
Only knows that she does, eventually.
If she still was a human, her face would be overrun by tears and snot, eyes bloodshot and red. She feels tired, almost, and finally lets herself fall into her own body that makes the world.
She sleeps.
The world is torn asunder.
She finds herself gently brushing the blackening rocks in her waters, one day, pushing and pulling them with more care than she had ever given them. They crumbled under her wrath before, debris sloshing around in bigger quantities than they should've been, but the future-islands comply under her tired but steady hand and her numb but watchful gaze. She never thought she would be creating something like this, molding the rough coal in her hands like a fine clay, but she finds it strangely soothing.
It's human passion, nature, to create, isn't it?
Her hand crushes a rock with too much force, dust falling down, to the bottom, never to be seen again. There's picking at the tips of her fingers, like salt to the wound. The world suddenly shifts, and a question flickers in her mind as light might flicker through seaglass.
Human nature it is, but…
She swallows a sudden rock in her throat, movement of water jittering more than it should.
…Is it hers?
She doesn't know. She's not sure she wants to.
She doesn't work on the new island she was itching to make for another several days.
The world reshapes itself.
Rocks falling, cliffs towering over the tameless sea, and she catches them with soft splashes of water. Islands grow like stalagmites, and she feels the life of her waters shift. She knows everything that happens there, in the ocean, on her land, and catches herself cradling newborn beasts like she would her child, brushing with feathers-touch alga that found home at lowest points of hers like she would do with her hair.
She accepted the plague that were her thoughts. It is all her to mold, to do, to create, for she predates the ones that she learned from. The life she gives is hers to judge, and hers to make.
Hers to take, too.
The thought no longer makes her flinch, but water recedes slightly from shores, and does not come back for longer than might've been natural, or possible. It's an uncomfortable thing to think about, and she would rather not, but it's a cycle. It can't be any other way.
She is something different, in the sense larger than just a lack of body, she finds. She is something larger in general, something bigger, something more. The storms listen to her Voice, loud and commanding; the trees rustle to her breeze, warm and caring. She calls to whirlpools and they listen, she pushes the ground and it obeys. Without a hinch, without question, without hesitations, without thoughts.
She is no longer human. A goddess, perhaps, but human is what she can no longer be.
A wave comes back to nurture the rocks and sand, gentle, as it ever was. She pushes cliffs a bit farther back, craving caves for weeds and gems to grow, noting with interest eggs with shells tougher than they should be. Another splash takes one, dragging it below.
She humms, carefully looking at it through the light stemming from above. Seems like the little creature will be born, already dead.
Hers, a part of her humms with her tune, deep and reverberating, sad in a way only those who lost someone before can be.
Hers, she agrees, not returning the egg to the wailing mother above the sea, and cries with her in tune with the pleas.
Time goes by, uncaring.
She's still gentle, it's her nature to be so, but her gentleness no longer feels… right. It roughs at the edges, storms and wind pressures appearing where they weren't before. Her heart still grieves for every life lost, for those are her children, those that came from her depths, hers, but it no longer feels like losing a friend, like lacking a limb. It's just another loss, it's only natural for it to return to her embrace even if she wishes not to see it.
She cares, still, but it is dulling. She cares, still, but it is detached.
She doesn't want it to dull, doesn't want that remaining human part of her to die. She is afraid it will, one day, and she will assimilate with the caricature that the word "deity" paints in those stories about the harsh and stoic, towering over mortals, beings. She is terrified of the perspective of her face becoming marble, stone and cold, and no hint of warmth in the eyes, even when a parent begs her to save their child, even when a ruler begs her to spare the ship with innocent from her wrath, even when her own flesh and blood begs justice upon the ones who tarnished her own name-
She doesn't want to. She doesn't, she doesn't, she doesn't.
She sobs into her arms, into her palm, and sobs and sobs and sobs, and the rain does not stop coming for days on end. For the first time in eons she remembers that she died young, barely old enough to be considered an adult, and she feels like that young girl again. Scared, confused, yearning for something she will no longer be able to get. She is old, now, thousand years past the point of no-return, and she is vast as she is the ocean molded from some thing into some one, and she had seen the world without its shell, nurtured it and mothered it, and she craves to be that girl again, to be rid of the power in her fingers. To be the girl whose name is long forgotten.
The girl that will-never-exist.
These thoughts come in waves, like a tsunami often does. Sick grief and hollow yearning, and nothing but numbness after it leaves.
Time goes by, uncaring, and with it she starts to care less, too.
There's a boy standing near her waters with a coin between hands and a prayer on his lips.
It's not an unusual sight, these years. She is the one that grants wishes, that whispers sweetly in the ears in infants the call of her depths. It's natural for her to call to an adventurous heart to traverse her vastness, promising a life no one had lived before, so watching a child calling to her name for safe travels and protection is not that strange. She might've dismissed the words altogether, spraying her small blessing of the forward winds, but, as she shifts her tides to envelope the boy's feet, she feels something shimmering, — beconing, even, — for her to look at; look, look, pay attention, look.
So she looks.
The boy's hair is white, like clouds, like sea foam, like the finest porcelain. His hands are held in the prayer, palm to palm, face full of concentration and kissed by the Sun. The clothes are nothing but an open vest and bleached shorts, legs bare and marred with freckles.
He is nothing special, as human as any other, but the whispers of look-look-look turn to an overpowering roar as the boy's eyes open and he stares at her.
Red, copper and blood; gold, sun and ichor.
He blinks, the reflection of both colors shines through him from inside out, and smiles with all his teeth.
"Hi!"
He calls to her, she suddenly understands. Cheerful and earnest, the coin falling from his palms in the action, and so, so bright. She splashes him in her surprise right in the face, making him sputter and drop his pose completely, stumbling on the sand behind, onto his rear.
"Hey!" He cries, pouting. "What was that for?"
She pushes a wave closer to the beach, surprise now turning into curiosity. The water brings a seashell to his feet, gently lapping it right between them. He blinks at it again, and chuckles with mirth.
"Not much of a talker, eh?" He tilts his head to the side. "Lotta things say you don't talk much at all, only seducing the most sensitive children to go explore. Why's that? Do you not have a Voice?"
She humms with the wind, and huffs with the shy splash.
I do talk, Child, she tells him in the call of a seagull nearby, with amusement, and he perks up. I do not, however, have the company for such chats.
"Oh! That makes sense." A beat of silence. Then, "Actually, that's sad. Being alone sucks."
He frowns, as if the existence of loneliness had personally offended him. He broods, skin on his forehead gaining more dark-ish tones as it seems to heat up in thought. It's a bit disorienting, to be honest, but the thought skips over as she muses that might be comically in-character — in-character of what or who, she is unsure. It feels right all the same.
Her thinking skids to stop when his face brightens once again with a smile so big it might as well just split the expression in half.
Something inside her stills, unneeded breath caught.
"Wanna be friends?" The boy asks, words feeling alien and natural coming from his mouth. "So you don't have to feel alone."
The world around them stops-stills-drops dead.
She doesn't know what comes to her at that moment. The trees behind the boy do not rustle, and the sand under his feet does not shifts, and the waves do not try to push him with their force, but in the frozen world the Sun still shines blinding-bright, and plays with rainbows on her waters, and she finds the steadily growing bundle of nerves inside her burst, and she-
She laughs.
It's exhilarating, to feel so carefree, so light, to Sound without storms and hurricanes taking her emotions to the extremes, and her laughter booms with deep rumble of the Sea around the entire world, making traveling captains and docked civilians alike flinch. The boy doesn't startle, though, doesn't jump, just grins impossibly wider and laughs with her, intermittently, in the way that can only be described as beating into a drum.
"I like your laugh! You should do it more." He tells her, eyes alight, excitement flowing through his body like a steady river.
She decides she loves him.
What is your name, boy?
He humms.
"Mother called me 'my Joy'." A breeze ruffles his white hair as he shifts to sit more comfortably on the sand, making him laugh faintly again. "People in the village call me Joy-Boy because of that, but otherwise she didn't give me a name before passing away. I think she knew something, 'cuz no matter what I heard in reference to me, it didn't feel right to be called that. Like it doesn't belong to me and I feel wrong in my skin." He shrugs. "Everyone says it's weird, but the forest and wind said that it's fine."
Seawater splashes him gently, retreating back without soaking him wet.
"I'm looking for my name, actually! I asked around, and was told to seek you for advice. You travel farther than wind, and your roots spread deeper than trees', and you lived far longer than they existed! You named them, even!"
He motioned with his hand around, drawing shapes in the air.
"So I thought I should ask you!"
She rocked driftwood down the shore with her waves, considering.
You want me to name you, Child?
"Yeah!" The boy says, joyful and smile bright. "The wind told me that your names give power or something, but I'm fine with the responsibility. Mother wanted me to be free, but I can't be free if I'm not complete, and the name will make me so, I think."
She humms in tow with the howl of the wind, with the rustle of the leaves, with the flap of sea bird's wings.
Quite selfish of you, is it not?
The boy's grin becomes smaller, softer. The red-golden eyes look into her vastness, wize gaze holding much more than a simple child should bear. He really is incomplete, she thinks, as the breeze tries to pick his hair further up, as the Sun tries to play on his cheeks with reflection more, as the light mist curls around him without a form. He is not what he's supposed to be.
Not yet.
"I never claimed to be anything but."
The next wave that comes is thrice the size of his form. It towers over him, over the entire shore, but it does not fall on his head. It drips onto his face, — held up and keeping the expression almost blank with the sole exception of a stained smile, — distorting the sunlight into a rainbow, sparks of color painting the echo of power the boy had yet to receive. Of the power that will uproot the world with maniacal exhilaration, laughing and laughing and laughing, for its bearer will be Joy; will be Sun; will be Freedom.
Boisterous, gleeful sound erupts from her nonexistent throat, booming with intensity. Oh, how can she resist, when that selfish boy asks to roam unrestricted? Asks to allow him to run wild? Asks to be set afloat, into the Sky, to be the one that touches it, mold the clouds up above for people to gaze upon and dream?
How can she resist, when she is the one that grants wishes? The answer is so very simple, after all.
She can not.
Then smile, Boy!
The ocean shakes as she bellows. The universe comes to stand-still, just like moments, blinks, before, taking its breath, awaiting for the inevitable. The trees do not rustle, the wind does not sing, only the sound of splashing water and burning heat from up above accompanies her as she grants the stray Spark a Voice, gives the single Sunray a Name, breathes into the lonely Boy a Life.
The mask of the freckled face breaks as the boy, — the Joy, the Sun, the Freedom, — shows all of his teeth at once. The wave falls, and the world shudders at the sheer power of that Name, and the no-longer-boy is enveloped into water droplets and reflections, fingertips igniting with millions of fires, billions of stars. Unseen winds pick up his hair, flaring it like clouds, and the mist of the waterfall loops around his neck, moving and poofing like it was finally allowed to become alive. Bare feet lose their footing as the body finally twists — jumping, and falling, and ascending higher, and his red-copper-blood and gold-sun-ichor eyes shine with thousands of otherworldly lights.
Smile without restraint,
And the no-longer-boy-
For your Name is Nika,
And the no-longer-chained-
For you are the one that was set Free!
And Nika laughs with the sound of roaring drums, without an ounce of a restrain, for he was set free.