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Your homeland will stay lodged in your throat like a stubborn fish bone for longer than you will be able to remember the taste of it.
You won’t even know you’ve forgotten something until you catch sight of the coattail of a memory and suddenly you cannot breathe because you are inundated with recollection.
Sometimes it’s the shadow of a tree on a summer day that reminds you too much of the swaying branches of badderlocks. Sometimes it’s biting into something sweet and the flavour that floods your tongue is not the flesh but the familiar taste of your mother’s embrace in a rocky alcove. Sometimes it would be the mere feeling of wet hair on your bare skin. It may even be the momentary smell of the air that your olfaction recognizes as home but could never be because you are miles inland and you can’t even hear the ocean waves where you are.
Rafayel arrives at a mansion hidden away in the thick Linkon woods in his car, the shiny black exterior a stark contrast against the gaudy gold of the porte-cochère. A mask sits heavy on his nose as he disembarks, handing his keys over to the valet.
That’s right, a masquerade auction. Underground and exclusive, like many of these elusive little things always tend to be by nature of their dealings.
“Park it in the garden,” he tells the valet, handing the boy a tip alongside his command, “I don’t want to wait long when I want to leave.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy says, taking the bank note and the round bulb of the key in his gloved palm.
Rafayel ascends the stairs of the mansion, golden light kissing the tips of his black leather loafers each step he takes. Inside the towering double doors of the entrance, the other masked guests are already mingling amongst themselves, tall flutes of champagne and plates of finger-food upon gilded trays on the expert hands of waiters deftly wading through the reception hall.
Rafayel does not mingle at these things, but he listens. Sometimes it wears him down more than it gives him information, but he is always trying to find more. Sometimes he has nothing to go on but the whisper of a rumour like what led him here tonight; still he does not take chances.
“The missus sent me because she heard there will be diamonds.”
“Was that one my husband delivered last time not to her liking?”
“Oh, it was too much so, that’s why I’m here for another.”
Laughter.
Rafayel plucks a fizzing glass from a passing waiter, bracing his elbow on an unoccupied poseur.
“Now, I thought the last ice sculpture was already quite provocative, but have you seen the one in the garden?”
He lingers for a moment before noticing the light that signals the opening of the auction hall behind the grand carpeted staircase. He’d arrived at the tail-end of reception for the very reason that he did not want to have to listen long to these needless conversations.
It’s a blind event today, no one knows what will be up for grabs but they are the more voracious for it.
“Your son caused quite the stir—”
Rafayel makes his way, abandoning his untouched glass of champagne. He can’t tell if conversations have hushed or become more lively as the other guests notice the same signal.
“The project was halted for—”
He can practically smell it, their hunger.
“Investors must have backed—”
The auction hall is reminiscent of a theatre, high ceilings and silk curtains drawn over the stage sunken in at the very end of the room. Rafayel would recognize the sheen of that type of silk blind, but Lemurian textiles is not what he was told would be presented tonight.
“Like the Fountain of—”
The stage is empty, lights warm and dim as guests filter in and fill the plush seats before the platform. There are two screens on either side of the walls. Rafayel reads the number on the invitation card tucked in his breast pocket and eyes the chairs once more. He treads downwards to find his seat.
“She says she feels weird about it and I told her she has a closet full of those crocodile shoes, what’s a pair of scale earrings as an anniversary gift, hm?”
And then there are moments like these, when Rafayel wants nothing more than to erupt into flames and take the entire human world with him.
But he cannot, and so he takes his seat, and he listens.
“Oh, mine’s the same, though she’s crazy about the pearls. Says nothing shines more than a Lemurian pearl.”
He tells himself, as he always has these long immortal years, that he must endure.
“It’s an heirloom, her mum got it straight from the EVER aquarium back then.”
He must endure.
“Oh, shame they shut down, my kids would’ve loved to see a real-life mermaid. My youngest is obsessed with watching those clips of ‘em from the early captures. I find myself fascinated too, you know.”
Rafayel grits his teeth.
“Right? They’re so humanoid it’s fucking creepy.”
He must endure.
“Hey, save some for the rest of us, yeah? You took all of the armour pieces last time.”
“There’s no guarantee—I might just snap up pearls and scales this time if we’re lucky.”
Just when Rafayel thinks he must be at his limit, the piercing squeal of a microphone cuts through the echoing room. The overhead lights go dark. Conversations die down, masked faces turning to the stage where a spotlight now illuminates a woman upon it. She wears a beaked mask reminiscent of an owl, plumes of wispy white feathers extending past her ears like horns.
Rafayel steels his nerves.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the emcee for tonight says, her voice low and inviting. “Welcome to the magic of childhood.”
A rumble travels through the crowd.
“That’s right,” she continues, manicured hands clasped before her, “tonight’s theme combines the mysterious nature of that which I know you all are interested in—”
Murmured laughter.
“With the magic, the innocence of youth.”
Auctions are almost always the most boring of the things Rafayel has to do, the drawn out descriptions and the stench of anticipation thick in the air before the first bids roll in, the calculating whispers amongst the party-goers between themselves and the agents or representatives present. He wishes they’d be more hasty; he needs to get home soon.
Rafayel is only half listening as the items roll out, stagehands wheeling boxes and carts onto the stage to present the relics.
A ceremonial headpiece from a baptism a thousand years ago, a painting stolen from the bedroom of its painter almost exactly five-hundred and six years ago to date, daggers and stones and countless ancient stuffed toys from worlds they’ve never cared to understand.
These blind auctions provide the adrenaline rush for those who line their pockets with blood. This rush they can no longer find after so many repetitive years of stepping on the throats of thousands below them, thus leading them to the equivalent of blind boxes for oil and gas executives and the occasional politician; though those are usually one and the same.
“Now this one,” the emcee says, and something in the tone of her voice draws Rafayel’s eyes back onto the stage, “this one is special.”
The people perched on their seats don’t know what it is, but they already covet it.
“You won’t find anything more exotic than this tonight, folks.”
Rafayel squirms.
The stagehands carefully lift the veil, revealing a glass case.
Rafayel feels his breath leave him.
“Now, this little thing doesn’t look like much, but it is a picture book that has stood the test of time, ladies and gentlemen.”
The glass is lifted off, placed on the side as the emcee steps closer, her tall heels sounding against the wood of the stage. The item is propped up on a cushion at an angle.
“The only one we know of: a Lemurian storybook. Conquered and seized about six-hundred years ago, this old thing has been passed from lords to thieves, and even a museum that burned down at one point in time, all before it ended up here for your viewing pleasure. I’ll spare you the boring logistic details.”
Chuckles across the crowd, gleaming teeth.
From where he is, Rafayel can make out every letter upon the bound cover of the book, knows exactly what they mean. The cover was made from shark-skin, iridescent placoid scales that require meticulous preservation but the end results weather all sorts of erosion in the deep waters.
Rafayel still remembers what it was like to go hunting in Lemuria, the hours it took to catch big quarry because you must first wait for the shark to relinquish itself to you as you promise to use every part of its corporeal frame once you rob it of its life. To watch its eyes and ask for permission, and then at the very end remember it as part of the sea’s cycles.
Humans don’t know how to do that; honour their prey. That’s why they hunted this particular species to extinction some two-hundred years ago.
“How many of you can say you know a Lemurian folktale, hm?” she jests.
Rafayel knows. Of course he’d know. It is his children’s most favourite bedtime story, they act it out during their playtimes and they’re always referencing it when Rafayel takes them out for swims in the sea. It was his favourite, too, in his youth.
The emcee dons her gloves and flips the pages delicately over, briefly describing the illustrations on each one. Rafayel almost laughs because his people’s paper was developed in such a way that they were meant to withstand the conditions of the deep sea; those gloves do nothing to preserve them. It’s why that book has lasted this long.
The two screens mounted on either side of the stage light up to show the pages in closer detail, exactly as Rafayel remembers them to be. These masked folk are unable to read the embossed initials of the original illustrator, a kind old woman whom Rafayel used to sneak away from his duties to listen to in the Whalefall City library, her deep voice a balm when she orated the story to bright-eyed Lemurian children. The name they called her by meant ‘keeper of tales’ in their language. These bidders can’t even begin to imagine what sound each letter would make.
But Rafayel mouths the words as the pages are turned the way one would a prayer at a funeral. In the way that you’d usually forget to worship the small things as the years go on and the promise of divinity isn’t quite as comforting anymore. In the way that no matter how long it’s been, you will still recall anyway the words as your mother had sung them where you sat years ago in her lap at a Seamoon Ceremony. In the way that in the face of centuries of this insensible grief, you will somehow return to that one prayer you thought you’d already long forgotten.
“Eleven million.”
Rafayel has often wondered how humans place values on things like this. When the hope and history of an entire people is represented in the story of a freedom-dreaming creature, put to print on a kind of paper no one knows how to make anymore, how exactly is its worth calculated?
However much it is, Rafayel gets the storybook.
That is the only fragment of Lemurian being present today, and Rafayel does not know whether he is relieved or frustrated as he sits through the rest of the auction with bated breath. He feels nausea in his gut.
They present it to him in a chest when he goes to claim it. Rafayel holds it like it would make up for everything he’s ever lost. A flame roars to life and he feels it in his blood.
He gets into his car, not lingering, shrugging his suit jacket off and throwing it in the backseat. He loosens the suffocating bowtie around his throat, popping off the top button of his dress shirt as he takes a shuddering breath. The fire burns steady.
He checks his phone, a text from you waiting for him under the nickname he has for you, the kids are in bed now, miss you <3
His heart is still heavy as he responds, but he will return home to you soon.
otw my darling
dun stay up 4 me
The roads are still on his way back, save for the occasional nightly call of a few sirens that blare past him, but Rafayel’s mind is elsewhere anyways.
He eyes the storybook sitting on the passenger seat every few minutes, the microscopic scales that bind the cover reflecting the passing fluorescent street lights. Rafayel recognises that he’s home only when he’s already getting out of his car, the sound of the door slamming shut ringing in its solitude at this time of night. He smells a storm in the air.
The house is dark, save for the dim lamplight in his bedroom on the second floor.
Rafayel trudges up the familiar steps, the storybook clutched in his hands like he is unsure how to hold such a thing. His body should know, shouldn’t it? He had read this book so often in childhood it felt like it was a part of him before he was forced to part from it.
He finds himself in the hallway where—within the doors dotted with patterns he had painted himself—his children are. He creaks their doors open slightly, just to watch their sleeping frames nestled comfortably in their beds. He hopes the incoming storm won’t wake them.
And then, he is in front of his and your shared bedroom. Rafayel opens the door cautiously, afraid you’ve fallen asleep having forgotten to turn the lights off and that he’d wake you if he is too loud.
He sees you there with a screen perched on your lap, eyes concentrated on what must be another one of the nature documentaries you like to watch before bed. Your head turns to him when the door creaks, eyes lighting up in a way so human that Rafayel feels something angry leave him.
“Raf,” you say, clambering out of bed, “I didn’t hear you pull into the driveway.”
He smiles, albeit tired, opening his arms for you as you come to him. Rafayel feels his breath return to him for one small moment as he feels his skin on yours, the storybook held in one hand.
“Did the babies go to sleep okay?” he says.
“Yeah,” you answer, crossing your arms behind his back. “They tired themselves out at playtime.”
“Told you not to wait up for me,” he wraps his arms around your waist, pulling you close.
He hugs you, long and deep, breathing in the scent of your hair. The bedside lamplight catches on the texture of the book’s cover that he sees over your shoulder.
You shrug, “wanted to make sure you came back safe. It looked like a storm.”
“What did you have for dinner?”
“Prawn curry. Talia brought it over and we ate together,” you say, rubbing circles into his back. “Kids said you would have loved it so we saved you a portion, do you want some now?”
Rafayel parts from you, cups your cheek. You gift him a smile as he leans forward to place a kiss on your lips. He tucks the image of your soft expression into his bosom as the moan of thunder breaks across the sky.
“Honey?” you say when he does not move, your breath fanning the bow of his mouth.
The first tear falls as he presses his forehead to yours.
You don’t say a word as you gather him up into another tight embrace, allowing him to sink into your arms. He cries into your shoulder, tears soaking the fabric.
“Atalantia’s shark-steed,” Rafayel says in his native tongue, voice watery.
You nod, stroking his back.
He swallows, “it didn’t—it didn’t burn down back then.”
He had thought it lost to time and human hands, made peace with the fact that the simple story he knew and cherished from his childhood would only exist in his recollections and that the only thing he could do was learn to be okay with it.
It’s only that learning to be okay with it has never been something Rafayel could do.
How do you learn to forget a piece of yourself?
“Oh, my Rafayel,” you say sadly, “what can I do?”
You lead him to bed, and he notices that you’ve left a window by the bedside open so that you could hear the sound of the waves right outside your shared home.
“Just hold me for a minute,” he murmurs as you wipe his tears.
“Of course,” you say.
The wind gathers the smell of the incoming storm, like the one that stirs in the cavern of his melancholy heart; bubbling in the back of his throat.
“I burned everything down,” he confesses, breathing in the scent of the stormy sea, “all of it. The manor, the things they were selling. And I still feel so horrible.”
He sets the book on his lap, hand rubbing absentmindedly over the worn cover as you gingerly unbutton his dress shirt. The fire is probably still raging, the multitude of fire trucks that passed him on his way home trying to figure out the best way to put it out.
Rafayel has learned that the bigger the empire, the brighter it burns when it takes its last breath.
You grimace, taking the garment off him, “there’s no equivalent exchange, Raf. You can do everything right and it will still haunt you. That’s okay.”
He releases a shuddering breath, resting his head on your shoulder.
Thunder roars and the sky breaks open with rain, shook from the tangled bough of heaven and ocean, relentless on the sand. He feels the faint spray of it on his face as it bounces off the windowsill.
You stroke his back, rocking back and forth.
“It’s been so long,” he breathes, “why does it still ache so terribly?”
Eight-hundred years and every new transgression that Rafayel discovers has been done unto his people by the grace of a human’s cruelty still feels like a new death each time.
He feels you pulling him closer, your fingers traveling through his hair.
“Because you are carrying it, my darling Rafayel,” you say, “it will stay with you.”
Because grief is immortal, and it is insensible.
“I know,” he nods, burying his face in your neck, “I know.”
Sometimes, when Rafayel is sleeping, he is startled by the faint recollection of what a bomb sounds like underwater. The anthropogenic noise they used to use to capture his people, to twist the gift of Lemurian hearing into a tool of torture.
Humans are always so loud.
Loud in the way that they are always fighting, always wanting. Loud in the way that they will not let live that which they deem lesser, more beautiful. Loud in the way that they will stand steadfast in their belief that their maiming and killing of Rafayel’s beautiful people was just a necessary footnote in the great history of man.
A footnote that holds the bright laughter of children in the alabaster Temple halls, a footnote that freezes the orators of a folktale in time, a footnote that records the hundred different ways a Lemurian may modify their voice to sing a sole requiem. Just one footnote for the ancient hunting method of his people, the communion of care, the weaving of sea silk, the threading of pearls.
“I’m always asking myself whether this is this wrong,” Rafayel says as you brush through his hair, “will any of this ever be worth it?”
The first time Rafayel had ever killed a human being for revenge was decades ago, nestled in the memory of another memory he tries not to recall.
He remembers very well, though, the feeling of flesh. It was a feudal lord who had an affinity for ‘experiments’ in which he would test for how many pearls a Lemurian could produce when their bodies were stripped of water. Rafayel found him after the twelfth of his kinfolk had disappeared from a seaside town in which they were seeking refuge.
As soon as he’d severed the man’s hands—when the fingers that had signed off on the death of twelve Lemurians were no longer attached to the body of the murderer—Rafayel felt confused. He was killing somebody for killing somebody, and though he was no longer a young and naïve god, he still felt the weight of his own hands in that moment. He should have been severe and ruthless, such was the might of divinity, and yet he had felt like the same boy with helpless knees at the twelfth Seamoon Ceremony of the year.
When Rafayel finally drove his dagger into the man’s heart, and he felt, for the second time in his life, human tissue give way to blade, Rafayel let the truth wash over him like an embalmment.
He was a murderer.
There could be no way around it, no matter what it was that led up, what it was that drove him there, the sum of it was that he was a murderer. He had severed a man’s limbs and plunged a blade into his heart.
He had thought that the man deserved it, deserved much worse for what he had done to Rafayel’s beautiful people. But it did not erase the filthy wetness of human blood, nor did it mask the sound of breaking bones giving way to Lemurian steel. The murderer became the murdered, and the once-sea god became a killer.
He sat with it for a while; the body. Amongst the personal effects of the Lemurians who were robbed of their lives, almost waiting for the limbless corpse to come back to life, to return and take him as its next little experiment. That was how impossible the struggle felt then. It still feels like that sometimes.
And when you’ve done something irreversible like that—murder—the only balm to soothe the ache is to do it again until it doesn’t hurt the same way anymore. It helped his ransomed people sleep, allowed them to be laid to rest with the proper rites, kept the remaining safe; that was his only salvation. He would have done worse. Has done worse.
It is Rafayel’s burden to bear, his hands’ to carry. He still remembers the smell of the wind when he first emerged from the castle, a gale that felt so alive, that carried the sunlight and the sea, stayed with him on his way back to wherever home was back then.
“Only you can decide that, my love,” you say, “and I will stay unwavering in how I love you no matter what that decision may be.”
And you hold those same heavy hands of his, taking the appendages and kissing them with baptismal lips. Rafayel allows you to wipe a tear from his cheek.
He knows the answer, really. It may be worth it, or it may never be. He will have to live with it regardless. Lemuria is dead and it has been dead for a very long time. Rafayel is still here. His remaining kinfolk, too, and his and your brilliant children. What has been eroded can still be known, can still be loved.
“They won’t ever know what it’s like,” he says, looking at your beautiful face, “to have their home stolen, to live knowing that everything they’ve ever loved is not theirs because someone else who doesn’t even care to speak their language will always be trying to take it away.”
You nod.
“And I wouldn’t wish it upon them, either,” he says softly, voice breaking, “I wouldn’t wish it on anybody—I wish I could take it away, that our gorgeous babies don’t ever have to learn—”
He hiccups, and you wipe away another streak of his tears.
Rafayel thinks now of his and your children, asleep in their rooms behind the doors he had painted for them. He thinks of their lovely smiles and the days he used to cradle your belly as you nurtured them within you, the first day he ever laid eyes on each of them and felt his world spin. He thinks of their little habits, the lilts of their excited voices and the very town they are being raised in under the steady mast of his and your love.
“It looks exactly like I remembered,” he says, titling the book so that you may see it.
You reach out tenderly, running your fingers over the shark-skin. The look of reverence in your eyes reminds Rafayel that there can be so much love in being human if only one learns to feel it again.
“Do you want to show it to the kids tomorrow?” you say, “you don’t have to. We can find somewhere to keep it safe.”
Rafayel shakes his head, taking your hand, “it’s alright my love, the story is meant to be enjoyed. They’ll love seeing the illustrations for the first time.”
You grin, bringing his knuckles up to your lips once more.
“They love many things,” you say.
“That, they do,” he offers a soft smile.
The quiet, local forms of Whitesand Bay history. The song of the sea, the festivals by the water, toddler footsteps on the quaint sidewalks. He thinks of their happiness at the markets, their love of the hikes around the secret alcoves or on the stretches of sand or up into the mountains.
His children adore tide-pooling, soft and excited on their feet as they peer into dips where octopus slither over rocks, small fish flit about, reaching for the body of a crab and squealing in delight as their little fingers are gently caught in the pincers. He thinks of their wonderful eyes, reading from the pockets of water or learning from the instruction of dolphins on the days they follow you into the sailboat that takes you far out into the ocean.
He thinks of their whooping when he takes them to watch the whales who migrate into Whitesand Bay for the summer; their breaching. How they cling onto him in wonder as a humpback breaks the surface with its barnacled beak like an angel suspended in mid-air, and then their gasp as the ginormous creature falls with a twist of its ancient body.
Daddy, daddy, can I try? they’d always say, and then he’d watch them take turns with their little Lemurian tails launching themselves into the air, delighted giggles each time.
The whale calves would mirror them, too, jumping and spinning. They could spend hours playing like that, and Rafayel could spend as many watching.
Despite this, the love that swells in his heart whenever he buries his nose in your pulse as he watches his and your happy children play, Rafayel would still feel the utter impossibility of return residing in the back of his throat; heavy and piercing.
“What do I do?” Rafayel whispers as you reach over to close the window that is now letting in too much rain.
You hum, “dance with me.”
His eyelashes flutter, “right now?”
“Yes,” you say, taking his hand.
Of course. Rafayel grins.
He lets you pull him up, and you snake your arms around him, and he you, tangled in each other with no music yet aside from the howl of ocean wind and the percussion of rain against the window.
“Sing a song for me,” he says, leaning on you, kissing your shoulder, “the one I taught the kids last week.”
Lemuria was always singing.
Rafayel can still hear the footsteps that echo in the Temple library, the hum of stone pillars, the music of performers in the heart of Whalefall City that echoed endlessly through the winding waterways. He can hear children’s chatter, the bubbles as schools of fish swam past overhead, tolling bells and the clicking of Lemurians weaving sea silk in a marble pavilion.
“I don’t know the words well yet,” you say, tilting your head.
He remembers the way sunlight glittered under the blanket of water whenever he neared the surface, refracting into a thousand wonderful glints. It was like the sky was dancing.
He brushes a fallen piece of your hair behind your ear, kissing your forehead, “you just have to sing it strong, baby.”
You laugh, “okay, but you have to help me.”
And Rafayel does. He begins with the first few words, leaving gaps for you to fill in, until you’ve slotted into the rhythm and your mouth wraps around the Lemurian syllables like you are following his lead in a dance.
You are, really. You let him guide your feet with his hand around your waist, and some of the steps you falter because you’re so concentrated on the words of the song, but it does not deter you from trying to catch up.
And then he’s laughing, and you’re laughing too, and he’s pressing mirthful open-mouthed kisses to your lips and cherishing the simple delight of your laughter that echoes in his jaw.
Rafayel forgot for a moment that his joy, too, is an act of defiance.
“Let’s take our babies for a swim tomorrow, yeah?” he says, kissing softly the shell of your ear, still swaying to an intangible music.
You nod, turning to kiss his cheek, “of course.”
You dance with him for some minutes more, and he basks in the comfort of your presence. You coax him to the bathroom to get washed up in the shower, changing him into his pyjamas before he settles back into bed with you.
But the waves of it come back still; the sadness, the anger. Rafayel feels tears well up once more as you lay nestled in his arms, the warmth of your cheek seeping into his bare chest.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to let go of it, baby,” he says, pressing his lips to your hair, “all this anger. I don’t think I could ever put it down.”
“Rafayel,” you whisper, stroking his back, “you don’t have to.”
He sobs then, holding you close.
This anger is real and he is allowed to feel it, that’s something you’re always telling him. To hold it like a face, like a beating heart, to let it into his home and sit with it as he would a friend. To accompany it until it passes like pestilence knocks on doors.
“What do you need right now, hm?” you say softly, “what can I do for you?”
“Read it to me,” he says, “please.”
“Okay,” you answer easily, “I can do that.”
You wiggle out from under Rafayel to reach for the delicate book on the bedside table where he had set it down before, gently turning to the first page with a smile on your face as soon as you see the first illustration.
You’ve steadily been learning the orthography of his language all these years, what sound corresponds with what letter, how the mouth must be employed when a syllable melts into the next. It’s clumsy in some parts and you’re still improving, but it brings Rafayel such joy; the eager way you endeavour to learn.
“Once upon a time, there was a Lemurian named Atalantia,” you start slowly, “they lo— how do you pronounce this one?”
“It’s like the end of an -ing, and the ‘k’ is a bit more to the back of your throat, remember?” he explains softly, playing with a strand of your hair.
“They loved their kingdom of Lemuria very much,” you continue, “but th-the kingdom was at con—constant war.”
You know the story well enough that you are able to understand the words you are saying, and you’ve listened to him tell it to your children for enough bedtimes that you also know the words themselves—but it’s different to read from the ancient script.
“It sounds like a mix between a ‘w’ and a ‘v’,” he says.
You oblige, repeating it with his instruction and then flipping the page, “Atalantia thought stubbornly that they could find a different way to end the war other than fighting the sharks. They wanted to tame them.”
Rafayel kisses your jaw.
“Lemuria, the kingdom of merfolk, were at war with the many sharks of the ocean—” you say, “was that right?”
He nods, kissing your clavicle, “yes, you’re doing good baby.”
You smile, “one day, Atalantia snuck out of the ancient city, across the p-plains of sand, through the windy kelp for-forest, deep into the rocky caves, until he ha-happened upon—upon a dark and cold trench.”
“Perfect, darling, keep going,” Rafayel assures in his native tongue.
“Atalantia was now looking at sharks of all shapes and sizes, their sharp teeth gleaming even in such depths. Atalantia trembled terrib —terribly for a moment, before they decided to instill themself with courage.”
Rafayel remembers the texture of his Lemurian bed some eight-hundred years ago, where he would lay upon the soft silk as his mother sat with this very book in her hands. He remembers the kaleidoscope of colours reflected onto the alabaster walls in the false sun’s final rapture before it went to its sleeping place and brought about a Lemurian night; even the smell of the Temple incense at dusk and dawn.
“Atalantia shot out from the rock they hid behind, their tail propelling them towards one shark smaller than any other. They swam and swam with all their might, swinging a sturdy rope of braided seagrass around the shark, finally trapping it. But Atalantia did not expect the shark to resist, and so as they tried to swim away, the shark tried to free itself.”
He can still remember exactly how his mother’s hair felt when the strands fell onto his child-cheeks lying there, as she bent forward to place a kiss on his forehead. She would interject with lessons about the symbiosis of the ocean, how one small action could carry on to another creature’s life, and thus one must live lovingly.
“The struggle led them down an even deeper trench, one where they could not swim against the maelstrom as they resisted each other. They found that they were both stuck.”
You look at him for one beat of his heart, and he can’t help but kiss you in that split second. He is granted your wonderful smile and he encourages you to read on.
“Atalantia thought to give up on capturing the shark, and they tried to escape—but the tides were too strong even for their Lemurian tail. Meanwhile the shark, though strong, lacked the coordination to navigate these foreign depths.”
And so Atalantia decided: they were going to tame the shark right here. Atalantia gathered their ropes, and pulled out a weapon capable of shooting out electricity like an eel. They set out to mount the shark, who resisted fiercely, and so the pair were fighting once more.”
Rafayel laughs, kissing your hair, “here comes my favourite part.”
“But, after three days of tiresome battling, it finally dawned upon them: Atalantia was trying to bind a creature of the ocean, just like themself. And so, they took a leap of courage, and they shed their weapon.”
He rubs his thumb over your rib bone as you read the rest of the story. Atalantia would succeed in befriending the shark, finding common ground in their hunting habits and sharing food in the trench. The shark would finally allow them to touch it after four days, and they would then ride their shark-steed friend back to Lemuria to the utter horror of their kinfolk. Through slow and patient acts of love and community, they slowly convince their fellow sea-bed dwellers to lay down their prejudices and embrace the ocean’s many creatures once more.
“Thank you, baby,” he says sleepily as you set the book aside.
You kiss his jaw, “you don’t need to thank me.”
He smiles, “I love you, you know?”
“Mmhm,” you chuckle, “I do. I love you, too, my dear Rafayel.”
He falls asleep that night upon the steady rise and fall of your bosom, listening to your heartbeat and the pitter-patter of rain on the sea outside his bedroom windows.
Rafayel wakes the next day at barely six o’clock.
The storybook is set on the bedside, and he mouths the title to remind himself that it is real.
There would be rare mornings like this, that bleary whisper of dawn when the sky is light but the sun has yet to rise, where Rafayel wakes up to an empty bed. The children are still asleep in their rooms and he would pad out and down to the beach to find you sitting accompanying the ocean.
He would watch, silent, as the tide washes gently over your bare feet. You would know that he is there, and he’d sit down next to you, put a hand over yours atop the cold morning sand. He would kiss your hair as you lean onto his shoulder, and there is only an understanding that permeates the silence.
He has a habit of telling the ocean about you, but he knows in his heart of hearts that you have already been known. You, with whom the sea shares a soul, the sounding cataracts and each roll of ocean waves an imitation of your breath.
You’re looking out this morning towards the structure sitting in the distance, lodged in the middle of the sea; oil drills. The building project started two years ago, and now it sits as a reminder of everything the earth has ever been robbed of. Rafayel remembers exactly how loud they are in the ocean.
He thinks of the rain in Lemuria. Not rain underwater, no, but the same rain that humans see. Droplets that fall from the sky and return to the ocean. They are like winking stars sometimes, when viewed from the deep sea. Most of all he remembers the faint thunderous sound of rain from Whalefall City, the way that water carries noise.
Baleen whales hear through bone conduction, sound traveling through their skeleton and amplified in their skulls. The air guns the humans use to build those oil rigs can be heard for miles by humpbacks, the sound from seismic survey ships penetrating the water through to the ocean floor. Dolphin vocalisations are shortened to fight against ship noise, nursery habitats are uprooted, masses of zooplankton obliterated entirely. Thousands of fish wash ashore these days, and inexplicable cetacean beachings are becoming commonplace.
Migration, feeding patterns, that which is instinct. Millions displaced from their maritime homeland for oil and gas.
Rafayel turns to you as the first brush of sunlight takes your face in its tawny palms. He knows exactly what you are thinking: how to be alive in all this gazed-upon and cherished world, and do no harm.
“Good morning,” you hum, turning to leave a kiss on his bare shoulder in greeting.
Because you live with kindness as your religion, because although you raise his and your gorgeous children baptised in the ocean spray of this homeland, the world is still so terribly big and the weight of darkness sometimes feels so inescapable. Despite this, the fear and anxiety, you love.
“Morning, my darling,” he responds, kissing your temple in return.
And Rafayel loves you, your world and everything in it. The reflection of himself in the tender pools of your sweet eyes, the shape of your pretty smile in his and your children’s wonderful faces.
A group of seagulls fly past overhead, their vocalisations ringing through the sunrise, almost like they are lilting to the rhythm of the lapping ocean waves like a song that has never ceased since time began. Rafayel hums.
You gasp suddenly, lifting your head off his shoulder, and Rafayel follows your line of sight to see the distant splashing of the summering pod of whales. The gulls are going to them for their breakfast; such is the symbiosis of the sea.
They are still here, enduring.
He watches the spark in your eyes, of hope, of love.
And so Rafayel, too, will hope for a great sea-change on the far side of revenge. He will believe in fairytales and the longed-for tidal wave of justice, that that further shore is reachable from here. His small acts of joy, of defiance, he will teach alongside you to his children, in the ardent wish that the love and care for this earth and each other becomes so ingrained in them that most anyone can see it, bright and sure in their little faces.
Rafayel squeezes your hand, fine morning sand in his and your entwined palms.
Resistance will continue to live in the throats of his people like a stubborn fish bone. And like a stubborn fish bone, it will hook into the flesh of their tormentors, tear skin from skin until all they know is the taste of Lemurian freedom; sic semper tyrannis.
Your head falls onto his shoulder once more on this silent summer morning imbued with salty sea air, and Rafayel breathes easier.