The See Me Sea
Star stepped up to the microphone, the stage suffused with darkness as the spotlights were turned to flood over the crowd. She could see him high above, standing on a walkway and leaning on its railing, the other girl’s arm hooked into his.
She readied the guitar, her fingers moving to take their place, then setting into motion and sending their lament to sweep over the crowd. Orbs of light materialize in the air, her magic always osculating between her emotions and her music. When her lips parted, her heart climbed out and spilled into the microphone. She closed her eyes, the orbs growing to fill the space with an altogether different kind of light. Let it reach him. Tell him what I can’t bring myself to say.
Star had messed up. She was stubborn, caught someplace between reality and what she wished were true. And doing so had pushed him away. It’s not what she wanted to happen, but nothing ever seemed to care about her wants.
When she opened her eyes again, her strumming continued to sweep her sentiments out in hopes that it would reach the proper shore. Tears were fleeing her eyes, her voice trembling but not by the song’s design. She remembered the chills that his touch sent up her arms, the warmth of his breath when he whispered in her ear, and his unfailing ability to reach out and touch her behind her guard.
Her magic had taken shape as a sea floor, air bubbles rising from the crowd who looked up towards a distant surface, the shadowed outlines of ships traversing turbulent waters, bursts of light exploding all around them, the flickers pulsing back down across the crowd’s upturned faces, the water’s blue supplanted by blooms of orange and white.
Star had wondered into his world—a place of shadow and misdirection. She had kept him at arms length, repeatedly believing the logic everyone had set before her.
*‘He’s no good.’
‘Don’t you know what he does?’
‘He’s the enemy.’*
He repeatedly tore at her every defense without even being present, her time in his kingdom shattering everything she thought she knew, yet still planting her feet and shaking her head regardless of the truths he mounted against her delusions. It seemed she had believed everyone...everyone but him. And now that she had taken it too far, she had pushed him out of reach.
The overhead shapes broke away from the surface, their fires doused as they plunged, the water swirling through their gaping holes, their wake clouding the water with soot and ash. The crowd grew anxious as the shapes loomed like other worldly wales barreling on a collision course, all of them descending in matching corkscrews as if performers in a water ballet.
Star’s song trailed off in a pause, the ships halting their approach as if on cue, the crowd’s attention falling back to the stage to peer beneath their new ceiling.
The next chord came forth, quickly climbing into a crescendo, a light bursting out of the Star, its wave striking the looming figures where they shattered, the fragments then descending like glowing sediment—all of them orbs of light.
The light leaving her reached high into the stadium, her song’s tempo quickening. She saw him shield his eyes, his gaze reemerging to meet her own.
She refused to look away, her voice growing steady as the crowd billowed and lapped against itself. The space between them shrank until she was close enough to whisper back with her song. ‘I’m stubborn. And sometimes a fool. I’m a terrible mess, and I can’t fix that. But don’t give up on me and I’ll never stop fighting for us. I know that you know. It’s not her...it’s me.’
The light retreated back into her as her song concluded, once again plunging her into darkness where she panted, the lit crowd erupting into cheers and drowning out the heart sound that was pounding in her ears.
He could no longer see her, but he stared down anyway, the other girl trying to tug him away. But he didn’t go. He had heard me.
[WP] Way down here beneath the ocean where the boats fly above, I’ve seen a lot of ‘em land here. They never go back up.
