show you what it really is; chelsey

[Tattletale]

cistella marina arva

I am the antidote
I’ll suck your venom out
Show me where it really hurts
I’ll show you where it really hurts

Boundless.

Wanderer.

Lost.

I have always been deaf to the rest of their words – “you shouldn’t really be doing that” but most of all, “Cistella, be careful, you’ll drown” (they have absolutely no idea) – but some slip in quietly, like the thought of spontaneous abandon on a grey day, and you say to the world, “why not?” and the world says back: this is why.

[/b][/i] This – the blackening sky unfurling quickly, a nightmare, the screaming wind drowning out your cries for help and the waves stir, slosh, and jump in your boat until it has swallowed it whole. There’s no use looking up when all you see is the cause of devastation, and so you plunge down, blindly swimming for any chance of refuge, not before you look down into the dark abyss that has been the unceremonious funeral of a thousand unfortunate bodies. You could be one of them.

With a contented smirk, I know for a fact that I will never be. I am the daughter of the ocean; I am the ocean’s and the ocean my own – every wave, my own blood streaming in my veins and every sand the dust that makes every particle in my bones. Boundless, wanderer, breathless, lost – that girl with flippers, fins for feet, a stumbling whirlwind without the ocean underneath her feet – and I couldn’t agree more.

We all have heard of shipwrecked tales, stories of how sailors came to be as good as dead when they hear the first note of the mermaid’s voice, singing the song of oblivion. People who seek refuge in the danger of the ocean put stones in their pockets and hope for the best – their best the definition of the worst, seawater rising up and down your throat, the sky, a faint color behind the sea, fading away as you fade. (You, whoever, child, will never know how it feels like – how it would feel like – because you embrace the water like the waves rushing up the shore.) I seek for refuge in the same place, but in the wrong way. Submerged, I take solace in it, finding a breath of life instead of cutting it off. There is a sweet sense of peace when I open my eyes and find nothing, no noise, no one else – just the darkness that goes on forever right underneath me and times that seems to stand still, light hair suspended and flying when it’s been brittle and dry on land, pale skin that burns whenever I step out but right here, it gives off something close to a glow, nothing like what I’ll ever come close by shore, already turning as dry as how I feel.

Mother and Father never come to an inkling as to what I want, and that is to spend my days by something that makes me, for once, just like everyone else. Maybe I was born wrong or backwards to want something that causes so much destruction, because it’s all about how we see things. They see the sea as a murderer, I see it as a surrogate home I never had. They both say it is beyond wrong for me to want something so far from my reach, but that’s all they ever say and it has become tiring listening to broken records that play the same old song every single day, every single waking second that I have. But as it has become tedious, the effect is almost astonishing as I find myself with a little more doubt unlike before, almost looking over to the stretch of water like it’s an endless question I’ll spend my life answering – or trying to answer. I have never been patient, at least that I know, and it only takes a second for me to pick up a pebble and send it far away then down. The ripples makes no sense to anyone but me, now it is a map, and as my eyes follow the farthest - yet faintest - ring, it reaches a rock, and in the far distance I can see a flicker.

Of what? I don't know, but I'm about to discover.

Head slowly rising up and nearer - it's a girl after all, with hair like a flickering flame of a candlelight. Fire. This is will be entertaining. "Would you care for a swim?"[/color][/justify][/blockquote]

Honey, your clothes are soaked
Mom leaves my daddy’s trapes
Show me where it really hurts
I’ll show you where it really hurts
I’ll show you where it really hurts

[/i]

a n a u t h o r ' s n o t e | one step closer to rastellaaaa[/center][/size][/blockquote]

[chelsey]

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[/color]
"the sky's full of grace."[/b][/size][/color][/font][/url][/center]

I don't swim without Darius.

Three years have passed since I realized the ocean was a graveyard, not a haven, and I've spent those years pumping saltwater out of my lungs and letting the sea in my veins run as dry as the sand. Yet, I can still feel the ocean sloshing beneath my skin as I walk with the steps of a mermaid pretending to be a human - and, like the curse of the mermaid, each step on land elicits the excruciating pain of knives pricking into the soles of my feet (a constant reminder that I'm somewhere I don't belong). I don't swim without Darius, because if I go into these waters without him, temptation will seduce me into giving up a fight I can't win against the sea, and I will drift breathless in this dark abyss - and he won't be there to save me, again. I don't swim without him, but I can still feel the waves pull inside my chest, like a hiccup I can't get rid of, so even if I don't swim, I can watch.

Storms remind me of Rachel and of passion - both things I lost in the sea. I wish I was a pirate, because pirates are good at finding lost treasures (but I have a feeling that if I were to ever set foot upon a pirate's ship, I'd be the first to walk the plank). There's a storm brewing in the distance today; gray clouds drift towards the horizon like a magnet. That familiar seagull's call that echoes within me (because my body is the orphaned home of a sea lover, and all it's inhabitants) pulls me closer and closer to the edge of the rock I'm perched upon, until my reflection stares back at me and beckons me for a swim. If storms were lights, then I was a moth, and every tempting glance towards it's pale illumination brings me one, unconscious step forward to fatality.

If Darius were here, he'd pull me back by the shoulders (because he knows by experience what temptation is capable of) and cradle my body in his arms until I cried enough tears that my soul was parched of the sea, and the storm that ricocheted through my skeleton calmed and shrunk like the still surface of a pond. He'd whisper words in my ears that I never really listen to, but the sound of his voice just soothes me anyway, and he'd tell me, as he always does, "I don't know what happened to you, but it isn't worth killing yourself over."

But, Darius isn't here.

And, as I edge closer and closer to the water's surface, I realize someone else is.

"Would you care for a swim?"

Her voice sobers me, and, instinctively, I crawl further back on the rock, every inch farther from the ocean both a blessing and a curse in itself. My feet begin to ache with that familiar pricking of the mermaid's curse, again, as I wrap my arms around my knees and tell the girl in the water, "It's dangerous."

She looks like me, with her red hair and eyes full of the sea. The difference between us, though, is that she hasn't lost anything in the ocean yet, and I have nothing to lose.

I hope she will take my caution - from one mermaid to another.

ooc - this is bad i'm sorry this is also very late

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[Tattletale]

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[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; border: 0; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 350px;] CISTELLA ARVA "It's dangerous." I can't help it — I feel the corners of my lips tug upwards before I could fully register it, until it has widened into a broad grin. She's a smart one, but it's not as if she's the only one who has escaped the inevitable fate of those who swim with an anchored heart. I can't say I've fully mastered the art of drowning others, not when I leap out of the sight the moment they see me. I like to think this is a complicated task and the series of actions needed to be meticulously prepared, as if setting up a domino, but if there's any art I've mastered it's the art of stalling. Not so much as the pleasure to see light disappearing from their eyes as water consumes them inside out as to see it flicker haphazardly for a moment, to hear their heartbeat skip in uncertainty. (I'm a rotten one, that I know.) There's no doubt in the wariness that practically drips off of her, as she crawls away and cocoons herself within the cradle of her own arms. I inch a bit nearer, and I'm not one to know the difference between beginners' apprehension and the fear cultivated from her yesterday's events, but she's sitting somewhere between those two, perhaps on the very line that separates them. She almost reminds me of Nerissa, emotions beyond clear when you see it reflected right from how her lower lip — almost, but the air is heavy around her, like she carries burdens too heavy for delicate shoulders. She almost reminds me of Nerissa, but there's something in her eyes that tells me it takes more effort to wrap her arms around her legs that it would be to just plunge into the water and let it carry you away. It's almost as if she, in some past life, was a mermaid who deserted the sea. And it's calling her back. "The water's fine, trust me," I say as I cup some into my hands only to let it slip through. I can't help but think whether my eyes danced for that last part, trust me. There's the familiar thrill in letting lies slide off your tongue like honey, softer than the rolling mounds of dark grey overhead, and the static hanging in the air. She looks at me but it feels as though she's seen right through, past my eyes and through my skull and into some distant memory. "Is something bothering you?" To comfort, perhaps, but more of the same way you part your lips open to gasp for air only to find water seeping and settling in your lungs — and you are pulled under.