5 Ashan 722
It was rare that the woman thought about her somewhat brief time with the Biqaj. Time felt as though it moved quickly...too quickly. She found that as time went on it became harder to recall memories and faces no matter their importance. There was no certain cause. Either drugs were frying her brain or trauma was giving it the boot, but the block was there anyways. Sometimes she remembered. Little bits of memories would come to her. Sometimes in a dream. Other times all at once for no particular reason.
......
“Have your spent much time around the water?” Her adoptive caretaker asked. His coiled, dark hair was loosely tied back behind his head. Maxine, a young child then, looked up at the man and sheepishly shook her head. He nodded, eyes turning a blue-green not unlike the color of the water before them. “I thought as much. That will change while you are with us.”
The little runt’s experience with the sea was limited to the couple boat rides she’s been on. Her accidental trip here from Etzos was long, and though she learned to overcome sea-sickness, the vastness of the rolling ocean remained daunting. She avoided the docks in Etzos and was too small when she was in Rynmere to do any swimming. Before all that, she recalled nothing of her life or an inkling of where she came from.
“Come.” Her caretaker beckoned her onto the beach. “Time for an introduction.” She trudged behind him onto the sand and toward the lull of crashing waves.
The hot sand beneath their feet softened the closer they moved to the water. When they reached the threshold between sea and land, he promptly sat down. He extended his legs so that the rising tide lapped gently at his toes, and he patted the wet sand beside him. Max sighed and plopped down as she was bid.
For a while they sat there in awkward silence. While he basked in the sun and stared out toward the bright horizon, Max had her knees drawn to her chest. Her dark eyes watches diligently as each thin line of water came closer and closer to her bare feet.
The young orphan wasn’t too little to gather that her caretaker wasn’t particularly fond of her. Morals and principles brought her under his roof, and a man of integrity like him wouldn’t respect himself if he let a helpless, parentless child fail in a strange world she didn’t understand. Her behavior and nose for down-right trouble didn’t help. Real man or not, she knew he stifled a small but loud part of himself that regretted doing the right thing. How could he not?
“You need not fear the sea, Maxine,” he started. “But you must learn to understand it and respect it.”
“How do I understand something that’s not alive?”
“Not alive? Of course it is.” Maxine looked at the Biqaj incredulously and he chuckled. He extended his arms toward the beach around them. “Look at all this! You hear the waves falling on the shore and the tide running back home along the sand. You hear the call of sea birds, see the sea weed drifting on the surface and the fish darting between the waves. You’ve seen the ocean’s mood change, and you don’t think it’s alive?”
"“I guess it is, sort of.” Max shrugged.
“Think of it like this,” he proposed tapping a finger to his chin. “Think of the ocean as…a person. Or a great being.”
“Like an Immortal?” Max pinched her nose.
“Watch your tone.” The Biqaj scolded her. “Immortals have great power. We acknowledge that, and we pay homage to the ones we hope to please. Leave the error of Etzori thinking behind you now. Only a foolish sailor would curse them. But yes. Like an Immortal.”
Max extended her feet out slowly. She jumped when the water first touched her toes, surprised by both the cold and the rush. Her hands dug into the sand beside her. She felt the cool grit of it against her skin as she rubbed it between her fingers. Beyond them, a strange bird with a long beak dove into the waves. When it emerged a fish waggled in its grasp.
“The ocean,” the Biqaj trailed off as he started to form his metaphor. “The ocean is a fickle thing. Right now it’s a beautiful trial. Plenty of beach. There are waves but their rhythm is smooth and easy to gauge. The cadence is slow. Like breathing. The tide is forgiving and the current is gentle.” He brushed a loose coil behind his ear. ”It changes with the weather, the seasons, the moon, and the whim of the Immortals. That change can happen real quick, too. A skilled sailor must know and anticipate these things or he will be crushed by the might of the sea.”
“You said it’s like a person.” Max pointed out. “How do you mean?”
“Well.” Her caretaker stumbled at first. “I said it was a fickle thing. One moment everything is calm and good like this. In the next the waves are giant ship-crushers, the tide is wrecking a whole village from the inside out, and a vicious rip current is sucking anyone in its grip out to sea to drown. She’s moody and unpredictable.”
"Like me.”
“You’re a troubled child, not a bad child, Maxine.”
"Is the ocean bad?”
“Well, no.” The Biqaj turned his head to eye her curiously, noting the way she was internalizing what he was saying. "The ocean is not your enemy but it’s also not your friend. You must never turn your back on it.”
Max nodded and stared out at the waves. As much as he warned her, the sea remained just the same. When he reached a hand out toward her to take, the welcoming purr of the mild conditions didn’t give her pause.
“Enough of that,” the Biqaj said with a soft smile. “We’ll wade in together and get you properly acquainted. You can decide for yourself the relationship you’ll have with the sea, and you can’t do that from the shore.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s take this slow, hm? When you get a feel, we’ll make sure you can handle yourself in the water. It’s a true sink or swim world you’re in now, Max.”
.....
A hard blow of heavy, salty wind woke the Rusalka from her incidental beach nap. She groaned quietly at the realization she was alive to deal with the consequences of another night of binging. Her eyes peeled open to spy a crab side-stepping a few feet from where she was planted in the sand, black eyes seemingly trained on her as its pinchers rifled through a plot of beached sea weed. Max spit sand away from her mouth and begrudgingly lifted her head. She could feel the stiff collection of moist sand grains glued to the side of her face.
Do I even wanna know?
Easy answer: no. She was here and that was enough to contend with. Slowly she sat herself upright. Instant nausea hit her. It was going to be one of those mornings. She clapped her hands together in vain to get rid of some sand before attempting to rub some off her cheek. More grains were plastered to her clothing. She gave up the task quickly and found her attention turning to the beach instead.
The sun wasn’t quite up to burn her eyes yet. A very faint orange glow was rising on the horizon against the dark, vast sea. The stars were still clustered in the sky and the moon was bold. The white crests of small waves rolling in against the sand were barely visible in the darkness. Maxine breathed deeply and stared out at the water. She watched as the tide slowly creeped up the shore. She had half a mind to remove her shoes and move her legs closer to the water as she did arcs ago.
"We're still the just the same aren't we, old friend?" Max whispered to the sea. "We haven't changed one bit."
The ocean did not respond. Instead it continued its breathing, maintaining the tempo of every small wave. It was relatively quiet and constant as the sun slowly rose. Yet while it lulled, it plotted toward a high tide with a heavy current, tough surf, and the flutter of a gale on its wings. None were the wiser.
Maxine didn't know why she thought of her caretaker on that particular trial. She wished she hadn't. It was another to add to the list of folks she'd disappointed, but then again, she was skeptical he ever had high hopes for her. She had always gotten into trouble. She never quite fit in with their ways and she wasn't particularly good at anything. If he had one single regret other than ever owning responsibility for her, she thought it might be what he'd said that one trial.
"You're a troubled child, not a bad child, Maxine."
The cursed Rusalka was too old to be a child. Her sins had crossed well beyond the threshold of "troubled". Kasoria would've scolded her firmly for subscribing to the idiotic "good" or "bad" sort of thinking, but she couldn't help but ponder it anyways. On any scale of relativity, she was not "good" and she knew it. If she wasn't "good" did that mean she was "bad"? Or something...else? Something in between? Her rap sheet told a clear-cut story. Her perspective now versus an arc ago was inclined to concur.
Changing on a whim. Unpredictable. Not a friend, not an enemy. Never turn your back on it.
She didn't have an answer to the question of her alignment. Not yet. So while the hangover and looming withdrawal started to weigh on her, she let her mind so strangely blank save for the sound of the ocean before her.
