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Waves Cry
It poured. The boat rocked very high, then
very low in each wake of every wave. She looked back at 'L'Esprit' amidst all
the waves, the raindrops falling off the rims of her seal skin cap and onto her
poncho. Her heart began to sink, it began to sink heavily, it sunk with her
soul....
Her eyes didn't move, nor did they waver.
For the rest of her life, she knew that scene would never be forgotten. The one
when she was still onboard...leaning over the meager rails trying to head to the
stern, the waves crashing up against her back and side that were pushing
forward. It happened all too suddenly, both the storm and the sudden rolling of
'L'Esprit'. In its entirety, the mighty waves overturned her. In that very brief
moment, before her body was flung into the sea, her body hit a porthole, a
window. Looking down at what her body had bumped into, her eyes gazed through
it...and found him.
He had stayed down to call the nearby coast
guard vessel as she went to fire the flare gun. Looking down at him still
inside, as the boat slammed her body onto the porthole, their eyes locked. It
seemed as though, in that one brief second of their entire lives, everything was
said. His eyes surrendered as hers saddened and her palm squeezed the glass. She
took him with her as the waves carried her into the sea, but the waves also took
a part of him.
Her body crashed into the sea, but nothing
was remembered until her numbed body was heaved from the waters close to the
overturned 'L'Esprit'. Quickly they covered her and seated her, frantically
trying to get away from 'L'Esprit' before it took them down with her.
The rain poured and the waves crashed up
against the small hull of the over-sized lifeboat and the large bodies of the
crewmen moving the boat over the stormy waves. She gazed back, her eyes fixated
on the one porthole that she could see between every wave. Just after the last
wave, just when the lifeboat sprung into action against the currents, she saw
his hand. It almost looked like a web, flattened out on the glass. His eyes
looked out, meeting hers. The last and final thing was said as the water line
quickly passed that of the porthole. A wave crashed right into her face, her
eyes closing, her body numb.
As the next wave ceded, the very bottom of 'L'Esprit'
was all that could be seen. Water covered the strong hull, engulfing it
completely. She managed a conscious breath as her body forced a whisper from
her, "No." Gazing at the site where 'L'Esprit' had once been, she reached out
with her eyes, her body unable to move. Her breath resembled that of panic, but
she couldn't feel it.
Despair grasped her eyes as the boat moved
away. She cried out "No!" as her body moved, almost running towards that spot.
Two crewmen heaved their weight on her shoulders, pulling her back, though just
barely. Rain poured from her eyes stronger than those hitting the water. "No!"
she screamed repeatedly in-between her cries.
The lifeboat was moving away fast now and
soon, her motionless body was being lifted onboard the 'Marionette'. Her eyes
never left that one spot and the crewmen couldn't force her body to turn from
it.
It all happened in total silence inside her
mind. Throughout the whole thing, her body had not felt one single raindrop nor
the slightest chill from her heavily watered skin. Watered from her eyes or the
rain, it was hard to tell.
Someone looking at her from a distance,
knowing her mind, would have found something odd. She wasn't mad at the waves,
or the sea for that matter. Inside she knew that she had the best part of him,
enough to last her a lifetime. Everything had been said, even the last thing.
Every morning of every day of her life,
right at dawn, she would walk down the short staircase and onto the sand,
heading outwards. Watching the waves fall against the shore, she would mark the
farthest point of where they would reach and she would sit there. Every time the
water came up right to her, she would rest her hands down and close her eyes. As
the water touched her, "I love you," rang through her mind like a freshly said
message. In response her mind would say, "I love you too." Smiling, her hands
would remain there, letting the water glide over and under it every time. Every
time that happened, more would be said...living a lifetime's worth I suppose you
could say.
It happened the first time she rested her
hands down to let the water glide over it. Her eyes burst opened as she heard
what was said. Finally she understood why he always seemed to place her so high.
It was his love for her that every single and last part of him, through and
through, in an absolute fashion, greatly admired and respected. She had never
understood, but the waves told her...and now she knew. Now she knew.
Never would she gaze up at a sunset, but the
morning air and the rising sun filled her spirits. For one day she knew that she
would soon be...everything he held higher. The dusk, when she gazed up at the
setting sun, was the dusk she became; the one thing that was always highest, the
sun. And everyday thereafter, on the horizon, she would touch him and rise up,
lighting every last inch of the seas...him.
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