"Undine"
By Ryan S. Morini
Cold is the water of the Amorith, that runs from the mountains to the sea. To its south revel small cataracts, churning as they commingle with the air, that some piece of them might join the great sky above. So, too, do lithe fish gambol about in its currents, harbored by the shade of its banks and its crystal waters. Men do there hold festivals, and their children oft play by it; the audacious diving and swimming in the pellucid waters, the reserved dangling idle feet into its whirling eddies.
But these things are in the south, and there alone; for cold is the Amorith, and colder still in the north, where it has yet to know the strength of the sun. There sits the undine, atop a cold rock whose great shoulders part the great Amorith, that the halves rush by, happy to reunite downriver where there be no titanous rocks to part them. The rock is cold from the frigid waters, which embrace it as they rush by, but still she sits atop her chosen rock; for she is no longer confined to vitality or its demands.
There she sits, softly glowing diaphanous blue, ever looking upstream where it parts, but never down, where it joins again. Long has the stuff of tears been gone from her, another of the forgotten things that spirits leave behind as they lose their mortality; yet still does her countenance bespeak her weeping, that tears emanate from the very contortions of her soul.
Ever does she watch the rushing Amorith, but inevitably does her mind fall to that dichotomous Memory, who does many a good turn but is the scourge of the despondent; and to her resurge those things she could not escape, though she tried in the frigid currents of the Amorith, when once her fate lay unsealed.
His eyes pierce her still, though only phantoms from Memory�s misty breath, their cold ice blue unmatchably, indelibly rendered in the core of her being. They transfix her from beneath cascades of finest blonde, swaying with the waters of the Amorith beneath her gaze. This she sees, and the rest is indiscernible, though she ever suspects a smirk playing across his taunting lips. His eyes remain piercing, but they flood with apathetic cold; and no longer do they sweep her up, but rather let her fall, fall through her precious rock, through the silt and mud below it, through the rocks that bed the mud. She falls to the darkness of nepenthe, where all is numb with oblivion and all is concealed from ever-searching Hope. Reduced to a fetal curl, she gives herself away to sadistic Memory, whose conjuring takes her back to her mortal years.
The comforts of her lodgings, the love of those who felt it for her; these things are long-lost. Glimpses of them remain, shards from a fractured looking-glass that slice and tear at the touch. But he stands there, before her, and she refuses to follow as he walks out the door, she abhors to - but she does, just as she did when she bound amorphous Future into the confines of structured Past.
Through the door she follows, absconding in his company to a secluded glade, where she receives each hateful advance with learned revulsion; but Memory will yield not to later understanding, and conjures for her recollections of her alacrity at the time. She wants to flee, wants to scream, to cry, but she stares fixated as an ingenue yields her maidenhood, and with it, her heart. No less vivid are memories of soft caresses and hollow suspirations, professing eternity and affecting the language of the heart. And now, even her aged spirit melts, and again she imbibes his amorous affectations, getting drunk on them like the finest wine, though she knows their machinations and their falsehood. For so long had she awaited these words that they took her with greatest ease, and her elation had been great with the wonder of a first true love.
But such things were not to be, and she knows, as she watches, the things that come next. All in a blur they come, coldly cascading past her soul; his scorn, his lust for others, and the laughter with which he met her soulful importuning; the unleashing of names by her former townsfolk, of "slattern" and "slut;" how the women shook their heads sadly, and the men turned their backs at her approach, and her peers taunted and laughed as ants tearing the sap from a crumpled, fallen blossom. Suddenly, she finds herself running, running barefoot but deaf to the complaints of her feet as she runs, tearing her clothes and scraping her skin, scrambling desperately to the river, whereupon she casts herself in with no further thought - oh! the cold! Her clothes soak up weight and become of lead, and she sinks as the torrents of water throw her about, that listless, limp rag in the wrath of the Amorith, and then survival feels imperative and she struggles for air, for safety, but all in vain. The river has claimed her, as it will, for it owns all things that fall within the grasp of its currents and plunge to know the mud that beds it. At length, her resistance wanes, and she breathes in the suffocation, and finally falls to rest, still hoping that all will be well at last. And Memory is finished, and leaves her to her own devices as she wishes she could weep, staring upriver where her rock parts the water as it rushes by.
� Ryan S Morini. All rights reserved!