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The captivated colour of autumn-leaves curls beamed under the sunlight, damp-still. Sky-blue eyes wide in fear, distress dyeing the light colour of blue.
Rimbaud—Rimbaud is, in short words: The Angel of Death. His eyes analogous that of death, and his black coat that fluttered behind him drawing an image of an abandoned (fallen) angel—was sure that if he can cry, he would have by now.
And Rimbaud contemplated, as a so beautiful creature leaned into another. Incoherent words leaving their lips, words that he believed meant lot more than indiscriminate sputters and cracked noises.
He watched and listened to the grieving screams coming out of the siren’s mouth, filling the expansive cove.
He listened until the echoes waned. He watched as quartz fulminated out of the dried, open-skin. Its ends were colourless, yet the base was ruby-like.
He wondered whether these two creatures were twins, or all their kind looked the same.
The creatures depicted one of the infamous sea-folklores, humans with a fishtail as their lower part. Mermaids. Merboys they were.
Rimbaud wasn’t sure he ever saw a human with such beauty, and he saw a lot—he saw people in different shapes and colours, and he navigated numerous seas and lands. Nothing had been even close to resemble these creatures.
In the minimal kin, humans’ wounds never ended up as burst quartz.
Nothing of them could be called humanly fairly.
Rimbaud’s hand wavered as he reached out, fingertips slightly brushing the short, flames-like hair.
It was then the siren fazed of his existence. He wrapped small arms around the other siren protectively.
That close, Rimbaud was able to see every feature of these creatures, features that no human ever had.
The crystalic, delicate, scaly layer of skin glimmered. The semi-fragile fin lined the siren’s lower back, sham jerry-built, as if it would split if it was touched by much more than water. The forearms and the tail’s fins were just as flimsy, if not more.
Two fine loose loops of black pearls adornmented the curves of the siren’s hips, resembling a photo-frame—flaunting the line of humanity and inhumanity where the skin melted with the scales, rippling surfs formed the tail.
The tail was the most alluring shade of aquamarine, gleaming like opal—gleaming, a perfect reflection of the ocean’s waves. Except, it was much more atrociously drowning.
It was endearing. It was supposed to be untouchable, that kind of beauty.
Rimbaud pulled his hand away. Abruptly, the sound of sands became so obvious under his feet.
And he watched as the siren tried to drag the dead body back to the water. The dead siren appeared so heavy to be carried by his brother.
“Need a hand?” Rimbaud asked in a low voice, tentatively approaching again.
The siren tensed. He looked at Rimbaud with wide sky-like eyes, keeping the tight hold he possessed on his brother.
“I won’t harm you, you have my word.” He reassured. Realising that the siren couldn’t understand, Rimbaud tempted to prey the dead one from the other’s iron grip. He did it so gently, trying to soothe the other with a tender tone, pointing at the sea, until he finally let go.
The dead body was warm in a very odd way.
Rimbaud put the body into the water, keeping a firm hold on him. He waited till the siren buried himself in the water.
Trawling something in the water was currently the easiest thing on the Earth; Rimbaud decided when the siren swam away as soon as his arms were around the dead siren.
。。。
Sticking in a routine wasn’t Rimbaud’s thing. He dismissed the boring life of repetition people usually like. He enjoyed being free, always doing something new, always having something to discover, so pirate he was.
Rimbaud wanted to travel the sea, because the sea never once had a rhythm, never once was expected.
Because he wanted to escape. Because he wanted to truly live.
Yet the raventte kept visiting that specific shoreline every year since that day, hoping to have the smallest glimpse of the siren.
It became a habit to look at the water, enduring a particular shadow of abnormal combination of human and fish.
Sometimes, his eyes would go wide upon seeing a hallucination of the shade he longed for. Sometimes, he could have even made the feature of the siren’s face in the other side of the water, celeste blue eyes looking back at him. Devouring, even.
Rimbaud ones saw an extending hand, reaching out. He blindly extended his hand as well, tips barely touching the water surface, certitude that the reflection on the surface belonged to the siren rather than to him.
He startled when the reflection suddenly disappeared, the voice of his friend filling the empty place, “We shall leave soon, you know?”
“Of course, Verlaine.” Rimbaud said, turning to face his friend.
Verlaine plonked beside Rimbaud. Picking a coquina on his hand, he threw it in the sea. They watched as the seashell skipped twice before drowning.
“You won’t tell?”
Rimbaud shrugged, “Not quite sure what do you mean.” His dark eyes met Verlaine’s, long strands wavered with the salty wind, “What does your ears want to hear?”
A hum, “This…sea, seems so special for you. Nothing is so special for you, wouldnʼt you tell me, your partner, why you treasure it?”
Rimbaud paused, he didn’t feel as the time passed by, and Verlaine didn’t hustle him. The sun begun to set. The glisten sank in the sea. The blue sky hues turned into twilight, and the sea reflected it darkly.
This hue of twilight, Rimbaud thought, had the same hue of the siren’s auburn locks. Ironically, his eyes had the shade of the light blue, counterparting the sky’s, too.
Rimbaud sighed, “It is the sea where I want to die.” He finally said.
Verlaine’s laughters interfered with the calmness that surrounded them. He laughed so hard making Rimbaud smile—he dragged him to laugh as hard, until the hard laughs became heavy breaths.
All sounds faded into nothing. The soft, relaxing sound of crashing waves into each other (and into the shore) pulsating in the calm night.
。。。
Rimbaud didn’t see the betrayal coming, the sound of their laughters mocking him at the back of his mind.
The drowning man couldn’t not find himself reasoning his crew’s betrayal. Or to get hurt, or angry at Verlaine, who pushed him to his final place. Not when the wound on his torso didn’t hurt, not when he was drowning in the water he so much wanted to die in.
Surrendering to the mass that pulled him down, and the weight of water upon his body, he lured his eyes to slowly close. He could feel how fast he was drowning, albeit not fast enough to land to the bottom.
Rimbaud saw the siren floating his way, and he hold what little breath he still had, if only to see him for a second.
The bewitching sight of the underwater world disappeared to nothingness. Rimbaud couldn’t feel the beats of his heart, he could feel, or see nothing but the siren.
The siren’s hand hovered over the swirling blood. He swam down, hand moving in the water until it landed on Rimbaud’s secured wound. He raised the rim of Rimbaud’s shirt, displaying a deep cut.
The unclosed blood agitated the water forcefully before weakening again. The siren’s fingers touched the fresh cut tenderly, yet Rimbaud’s muscles jolted away from the touch.
Comparing to the water, the siren’s hand was freezing.
(The siren felt more dead than the actually dead siren.)
The siren seemed to understand that something gone wrong with the touch and refrain from touching again, swimming in a dense from Rimbaud.
Rimbaud looked at cerulean, astonished eyes. If he raised his hand, he would touch him without much of an effort. He would be able to feel him, and he would embrace his cool skin.
It didn’t cross Rimbaud’s mind to do so. All he wanted was to behold his sight.
The siren looked at Rimbaud for long time, and Rimbaud wanted to never close his eyes, fighting the slumber and fatigue as he lost his breath. But he soon drown on to the blackness.
He was awaken by the cold fingertip of the siren on his face. Rimbaud was barely making the siren’s shape, his sight blinded by snow.
The siren waved a black hat in front of him, then put it in top of Rimbaud’s head the way Rimbaud does.
Rimbaud’s eyes fluttered in surprise, if only because the siren was familiar with his hat. Inhaling more water, he grabbed the hither and thither hat. Rimbaud disdain the burning sensation inside his lungs, putting the hat on top of the siren’s head, where a seastar was elaborated it with a number of small seashells.
It felt like an eternity; it was minutes. Seconds, even.
He watched the young siren as he played with his hat like a child, examining it with curious, beautiful eyes.
His swirling blood had been eaten by the water as it merged with it, blood still spreading out of the wound.
Rimbaud smiled, the siren didn’t know that he was dying, and that how humans’ wounds were like.
His eyes closed, and he thought that perhaps, drowning was so wonderful.