William Byrd High School

"The Vanishing Sun and the Deep Blue Sea"

                  And they threw me from the ship with great might. They think they are getting rid of me for good, that I am upset to be deserted in the middle of the ocean, but they are wrong. I am free. I can let go, with not a worry in the world. So I sink. I sink to the abyss full of lurking creatures.

                  I can see the glistening of the sun on the crust of the water above. I swim for it as hard as I can, oxygen becoming limited. My legs kick, my arms pump, but I’m getting nowhere. I have to withstand the temptation for air. I finally give up, and stop swimming to save my last few seconds of breath.

                  As I look out through my weary eyes I see something moving. It’s getting closer. It becomes clearer, and the form begins to shape. It is a woman. She’s majestic, and flowing in her motion. Long green hair, and frighteningly beautiful eyes entrenched with the deep colors of nature, perpetually changing from different shades: green, blue, brown, and sometimes solid black. She is beautiful. As she approaches me, my eyes begin to close, and the sleep overtakes me, and I think my last thought, and see my last sight, thinking I shall never wake up.

                  She revives me. Her eyes stare into mine, and I can breathe. I lie in a bed of seaweed, covered in plants with a variety of leaves. I’m under water, but somehow I can breathe. I look around and the walls are black; the furniture naturally shaped. Everything looks dark and moldy, but it isn’t possible, for it’s encased in a watery preservative. Beautiful shells lie about everywhere, not the flat shells which used to be homes of great granddaddy snails or held the delicate natural creations of pearls, they’re the long ones, the ice cream cones of the sea. They’re swirly on the outer layer, as if from the unending rolling about from the eternal efforts of the sea. I look about the room and I see that my hands are funny looking. My vision hasn’t returned from what it was before blacking out, but I can decipher that there is something new. Small webs stretch between my fingers; suspiciously my skin has changed to some type of shape with a bluish tint. I reach down and part the leaves that cover me. My legs have vanished, my toes stolen and my hind quarters lifted. In their place one new body part—a fin, purple and blue, an extraordinary beauty. So excited, I swim, burst out of my sarcophagus of weeds and flutter up out of the ceiling-less room.

                  There, I see the traffic of a thousand mer-people! Their fins glisten in the reflection of the sun, all gliding about the giant citadel. I venture up into the current of strangely familiar humanoids and travel with them to the city. Just like an ancient human marketplace, they sell their special foods from carts and have tiny shops along the rows of the tightly packed sand road. Everyone is speaking, yet I don’t know what they are saying. No one is talking to me in particular. They seem to be happier than us humans, always laughing and smiling, for they have not a care in the world. They live in the golden age of their civilization.

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