Sirens

“I hate you!” was the last thing reportedly swung into the evening heat before celebration morphed into something other.

Serena had slunk into the sand and away from the lights, down towards the ocean and the impending late summer night. Swaying down to the rocky border, Serena decided to settle herself — nestling into a nook within the rocks, a gritty pool swirling beneath her swinging feet. She embraced herself, shrinking from the breeze which kissed every glimmering droplet of spray which the waves unleashed in their play.

The sounds of laughter and the timbre of the acoustic guitar were now imperceptible to her, there was nothing but the drum of the ocean, not even a gull dared intrude nor intercept the crude advance of the moon.

The horizon blurred and blended the most splendid dusky amber together with a dusty, most gentle rose — bookended by a slow, deepening azure on each side. The universe’s canvas, the meeting of two mirrored points where the memories from each day fall into the oblivion of yesterday. Serena could not help it, mesmerised she indulged in the pull of night’s gravity, despite having been warned. The sea-born have seen it. The sea never fails to collect.

She, the sea, was whispering with a soft aggression, seemingly trusting Serena with her secrets, revealing one of her envoys. Released from the depths, a subtly defined torso tore through the membrane of water, a gleam glistened over it, before gliding back into the body of the ocean, leaving only a flawless frame behind, which glowed with many tiny reflections of the sunset. Serena did not interrupt the moment with eyelashes. He stared right back. His dark hair was endless and his eyes were transparent, transporting. Barely parted lips whispered to her from a distance a “come” which floated in the breezy air, her ear a spiral seashell which unleashed its infinite echo within her mind, un-forgettable. Some would say, unforgivable.

The boy undulated towards the culminating point of the rocks’ finger, beckoning her there. A smile played on the boy’s mouth as he watched the girl step and stumble down to the summit of rocks, his chosen spot, on her unbalanced pegs. She allowed her legs to free-fall into the muscle-tensing sting of the ocean. The seaman anchored his forearms, bound by interlaced fingers, at the pinnacle of her feet, and it was not uncomfortable. It was far too comfortable, though that she would not have known. The boy now flashed a full and beaming grin, but still no words beyond his whisper had been uttered between them. The boy relaxed into a lilt which finished with his soft brown cheek pressing into the fleshy edge of Serena’s thigh. Her big heart sung at a new pace with this increased contact.

Without instruction, his or her own, on her next inhale of breath Serena’s body slipped beneath the surface of the water with a smoothness she had never expected from herself. The boy seized her beneath her arms before this ease carried her away. There was no exhale between them. Serena’s legs had locked themselves into a loop around the boy’s core, resting on the coarse shelf of his hips. Her hands fell around his neck, the sensitive skin around her wrists aroused by strands of his roped hair. His hands pressed her contours further into him. A travelling tickle gripped her slowly and then at once. The boy and the ocean’s hug alike now warmed soothingly through her. Serena’s head cradled in the crevice of the boy’s neck, she stared into the endless out, beyond. Behind her, the rhythmic shanty of the waves hit the sand at the plotting moon’s behest, leading the couple in its dance — in and out, a song which breathed for them both.

With each dying ember of sunset, the further offshore, further from the coast and towards the fall of horizon they wafted in each others’ arms. A strong hand guided Serena’s head to meet the boy nose to nose. They synchronised a perfectly calculated angling which allowed their lips to meet like magnets stronger than the poles. His sensual, saline kiss stung her anxiously-worn lips. Eyes glued to their lids, the pair are sighted to have sinked, with a bubble and then zilch. With a soft and consistent kiss, this boy took our Serena. Lost in the enchantment of this intimate act and entranced by the embrace of the hypnotic deep, the girl never came back.

The rescinding sun slowly and yet suddenly surrendered to the gathering strength of his crescent-ed, cratered lover, forbidden. And that was that. The night, interrupted, erupted in emergency sirens searching for the missing. Steady and swooshing lights swooped the seas, sailors and party-attendees scoured the beach. But most of us know that now Serena’s asleep, fallen with water into the steep, into deep and over the edge of day, into the forever of that night. Those men over there will tell you that they spotted half of a man bobbing with her the last time she was seen. But the sea, it is said, has seen her since.

I hope she is out there, waiting for me. I’m sorry Serena, I didn’t mean it, you see. Yesterday is setting, I’ll meet you in the deep…