The most beautiful thing you can ever think of 🎶

I have been skimming on the tip of the water’s edge since I was very young. Everyone warned me of this risky endeavor, yet I never listened.

Hearing the roar of the white foamy mouth trickling into my pores, screaming and wailing it’s cry like a monstrous alien creature.

Then, one glorious morning—I saw her.

The most beautiful thing in the world.

My eyes aren’t very good, but I can make out the color of her face.

Red.

She dips by the stream and her wing glides against my fin.

I know she loves me.

I know she does.

She protected me against me a predator before.

I was flouncing about the waves like the fool I was, and I saw a talon grabbing at my tail.

I struggled and struggled.

Until the most beautiful sound I ever heard —-and the most beautiful creature ever, came into my vision and senses.

She screamed and fought off the other bird.

Then, her eye met mine, and she flew away.

The next day, I heard a boat motor and I swam up to see it. I was always too curious about things.

I heard a song they were playing on the boat.

It made me think of her.

I heard it and it got stuck in my head.

I wanted to sing it to the beautiful red bird that saved my life, to somehow get her attention.

But how can a fish and a bird really be together?

*******

“Maybelle, did you see that?” Sera says, her hand pointing to the water.

Maybelle clutches her forehead, and with her other free hand, holds onto her stomach.

“Darling, I am much too seasick. I can’t look. I’m sorry..”

“Holy moly! That Scarlet Macaw just dipped in the water again! Wow!” Sera exclaims.

Maybelle feels ready to throw up, but as she reaches the railing, her girlfriend holds her steady, her hand caressing her waist.

“I’m so sorry, honey. If I had known you’d be so ill, I wouldn’t have ever had us take the vacation here——or to go on a boat especially,” Sera whispers.

Maybelle looks at her girlfriend of ten years. Her soft green eyes, her light brown hair, curled at the frame of her face—-her laugh lines present against her gentle pink lips that she wants to kiss—-and then, they heard a loud screech and both of the them look up.

They look up and see the Scarlet Macaw dancing in the humid air.

They also hear a flapping in the water.

“What’s up with that snapper?” Maybelle asks.

Sera shrugs. “I’m not sure. Strange things happen when true beauty is in front of your very eyes,” She takes Maybelle’s hands in hers. “As you are to me.”

Their hearts are pounding and Sera’s yellow gold eyes are like the sun to Maybelle; Maybelle’s green eyes are like endless rolling green knolls to Sera—and they relay their love in a glance.

******

The Scarlet Macaw hears a song playing.

So does the snapper.

They both decide what they want to do.

****

I see that frantic swimming and my heart leaps in my chest, and I swoop down and I fly around and I wish I could just talk to him.

I saved him once, and I’d do it again.

It’s morning and I saw the two humans hold each other on the boat to the sad music, and I danced in the air, tears I wished I could cry singeing my soul like a burning flame.

This time, I swam to the water’s edge.

I saw him again, and I grabbed him gently.

Our faces met.

I flew up, not too high.

“In otherrr words…. Hold my hand….”

The sad song hit my heart like a reverberated drum, and I held him close.

He told me I was the most beautiful thing in the world.

As I laid him gently back in the water, we kissed a bittersweet caress.

******

The two humans were amazed and in awe of the odd spectacle they had just witnessed—-the snapper and the Red Macaw’s almost loving embrace and dance in the humid air of the Belizean wildlife oceanography.

A double rainbow hit the sky and the sun shone through it like the most brilliant star that ever had been born in the entirety of the universe.

Sera and Maybelle kissed and headed back to their apartment, transfixed and enraptured by the strangeness of the whole event. Maybelle was no longer seasick.

The two lovelorn creatures of the air and sea still longed for one another, the snapper still surfacing like a strange new type of mermaid. He loved his red feathered savior, for she always visited him with her strange dance near the water’s edge.

*****

Fin.

Love, Melissa ✔️❤️