Seems I Can't Stop Myself

I, uh, did another story for Wordsmiths.

I'm not really SURE if this can be called a "story," but whatever. It wanted to be written, and so I wrote it. (as of Sunday afternoon at 3:30 EST this is a rough draft....It might bear some refining or I might just leave it alone. Still undecided on that one.)

As always - feel free to offer your thoughts in the comments. Seriously, y'all, won't you tell me what you think?

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Part of One

The noises are the first things. While the nothing is an unknown, a fantasy, the noises are real. The click and shuttle of a hundred others, the calling to blood as blood will. The noises make family when nothing else is real.

In some time, the slurp and scrape of movement is added to the hot din of home. A regular booming rush advances and retreats as tongue starts to poke and taste warm brine. Darkness ceases to be all and all. A prickle of reality spins down from where the sound comes in toward an unseen heaviness.

Dark and light change places like breathing. When the heaviness moves, a muffled sound is made. The heaviness and hearing place become known as the body, the body has a purpose.

As the booming rush comes and goes, as light and dark change places again and again, the family noises become a chorus, a hundred distinct notes vibrate a low tense hum of hungry awareness. The change of light and dark, the sibillant advance and retreat of the booming all-breath, the body and the family voices, all speak of the end of waiting.

The body cramps instead of floats. The sound and light and taste and feel work as one in the body. The voices moan against to too-small walls; light changes to dark. The call comes.

Mother.

Mother is waiting in the booming rush. Mother is waiting. Mother wants. Go.

Legs churn aginst the tough walls of home. Head bobs and sways. Lip gets caught, a hole is torn, enlarged, must get out now.

There is Salt and noise, so loud. Coldness down the body, but Mother waits in the dark. Must find Mother in the sea.

Eager head leads on, hungry for salt and cool water. Must get to Mother, the sea calls, the booming rush of wet is water, that is where Mother is. It was not known before now, yet now it is a history of truth. To the sea.

The body tears free of old home, is joined by the family in a frenzied swell up to the coolness of not-home. Find the moon, Mother, the sea, go find them.

At the first breath of salt air and sight of stars, the song of the multitudes of family is a hum of wonder. The path to their fate is worn on the surface of the sea in a long silver track of spilled moonlight. Mother waits at the end, her scent carried on the waves toward the family, who are toddling, then running, then swimming, to her. Joyful no-weight, the wrap of sea is a loving embrace.

Dark turns to light, the booming rush recedes. The last of family breaks into day in a tardy run toward the familiar noises that are fading fast. They call to come, come to us, we need you. Into the slip and slide of surf the last one goes, and by that it is finished, again.