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A forlorn cry cut through the sound of the surf. A seagull calling for something it had long lost flew over the seaspray and rocky bluffs, victim to wind and storm. The sky's ashen cloak drifted like a mourner over gravelike cliffs. The souls of many haunted this place more than any cemetery. Niamh climbed over the slippery grey-and-green rocks, covering her pallid face with a sticklike arm whenever a wave threatened to wash her out to sea and back. Coughing weakly, the woman hurried to reach the end of her wearisome walk. Her coal grey dress clung to her legs and her doeskin boots gripped the rocks as though they were enchanted to ignore the waves and the seaweed. Her cornsilk hair waved with the biting wind, sometimes flapping over her shoulder, sometimes whipping angrily at her face, causing beautiful autumn-sky eyes to close and tear. At last, she made it to her destination. The cliffs ended abruptly, telling the world that they had once been nonexistant... just another part of the earth that had suddenly dropped off in a violent quaking of the earth. Glancing warily over her shoulder, Niamh hurried on. She wanted to make sure that nobody had followed her to the tree-hidden sanctuary. No... the trees were the sanctuary. The nodding pines protected her from the capricious wind that was sweetly carressing her cheek one minute and hatefully slashing at her skin the next. Rain soaked her far more thoroughly than the surf had as she wove through trees and over stumps.
In the middle of a clearing was a basin. Rain hit it, but the water didn't ripple at all. She stood over it, holding her hair away with one trembling hand.
With exceptional reverence in her countenance and voice, she asked, "What will become of my father?" The world answered her with glowing image for her eyes only. Then she whispered piously, "What will happen to my mother?" Again, her question was answered, only with sound for her ears this time. The wood itself remained the quiet hush of a rainstorm and the echoes of the crashing of waves over rocks.
Then she straightened her back and asked to the skies, "What is my fate?"
Nothing. "Please?" Still no answer. "Why?"
Figures appeared all around her- those who had died from the shipwrecks at the cliffs, and those who had arrived to ask the same questions she posed now. Tears mingled with raindrops on Niamh's cheeks as she grew frustrated. Sounds became muffled when She arrived. A Goddess, cloaked in white and light, glided into the clearing, approaching the young woman with only one intent. She stood across the basin from Niamh, close enough to see the bottom half of her flawless face. A long finger floated up in front of blood-colored lips in the sign to remain quiet. This hand then descended to touch the surface of the water. It finally rippled, creating a number of images, each quite different and all only for Niamh's eyes.
Suddenly, the girl understood the reason she had not been allowed to see her own destiny. "Thank you," she whispered to thin air. The Goddess had disappeared, save for a single lotus remaining where she had stood.
Thus satisfied, the girl left the way she came, braving the wrath of the avaricious sea once again.
TempestuousSeas · Wed Mar 28, 2007 @ 10:10pm · 0 Comments |
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