Moike
I was always in love with things that were beautiful and refined, I never could love normal women, they were too earthy, and no matter how I tried there was always some dark burning imperfection that nagged away at me. I found solace in lady boys for a while as their imperfections were little more than grey smudges on my soul but even they seemed to tarnish so quickly. Sex was out of the question most of the time as they took off apparel and revealed what they were and though I didn’t care for gender I did care about wigs and nails and pieces that needed to be removed.
I grew lonely and felt I had begun to fade, I would go out on stormy nights as the damp thunderhead and erratic lighting gave the city streets a new unblemished look, the streets would gleam with reflected jems of light from the buildings and I could loose myself to the rippled pattens and the patter of rain on my head.
The world was an ugly place to me on bright sunny days and I would weep bitter tears when I arrived home, on occasions I would collect a single perfect bloom but it would soon brown at it’s delicate edges and wither. I liked the first fall of snow giving the world a face lift, hiding the cities rubbish in pristine white but like the petals it soon turned to a brown and black flecked mess, dangerous and moleverlant.
The city probably was not the place for me, I should have been away in the country in some ornate cottage deep in the hills but I could never leave such a press of people until I had found the one I needed. I bought silver jewerlly intricate and smooth with little glinting diamonds nestled within – these were a joy – oh I could feel they were imperfect but it was so minute. I selected only the synthasised stones as they were as perfect as this existence could get.
Time washed over me and felt my light dim further. Christmas time came and I walked through the Christmas throngs loathing the very smell of the crowd, the putrid smell of the train tunnels, sweat and diseil and the press of humanity, none of them would ever provide what I needed. I needed to get out.
I went home and packed the clothing I had had handmade so that it fit as best it could. My thin fingers curled around the handle of a vile rolling suit case, expensive and gleaming with intricate swerles of colour subtily making up the case. I went and I hid, along the coast in a little cottage painted yellow and I would listen to the sea pound and slurp and rush, from high up on the cliffs it looked perfect, and sometimes if I could find a stretch of beach without the rotting remains of sea weed and tangled condom combinations, I could stare at the foam and the damp ribbons left by my feet and it was lovely and I approached a calmness but never happiness.
Sometimes there was a stone, so smooth and round and I would scoop it too me and clean the sand from it and know just how rare it was, sometimes I would cry, adding my salt to the brine of those waves that had delivered such loviness to me.
I begain to build a little crain of them, a little neat pile in the driftwood and sand that passed for a garden. The pebbles I found increased and the sea offered me gifts of beach glass worn smooth and glazed in the most delightful of ways. My plie grew and the structure become something unto itself. A form began to emerge and I laughed with glee at the silly little thought that they sea was giving me in bits that which I craved, I was sculpting perfection out of beach thrift.
By midsummer she lay there, my girl Moike, a long plait of rope splayed out from her perfect head and I wished so that I could scoop her into my arms and dance. I could not for she would collapse into nothing and I knew I could never rebuild her.
It was mid summer when I thought my new found peace was to be shattered, it started as the balmiest, heavy and wonderful day, I walked along the cliffs watching the sea gulls rise and fall and the there at the edge of the sea I thought I saw a yellow band, like liquid gold, shimmering and glinting. I hummed a low old tune I remembered from the cradle though the woman who sang it too me was nothing but a hazy silohette in my memory, the music had always impressed itself upon my bones. Notes could be perfect – sometimes. Seagulls sored grossly in the sky and a headache began to press upon me. I retreated to my little home but could not settle, I was still missing a piece of Moike, I didn’t know what it was but it was missing and I had to find it. The sea called me. I was half blind with the pressure in my head and stumbled down onto the beach, the tide was far out, there was mud and sand sink wholes that would suck you down to a watery grave between me and my saviour the sea.
In a kind of delerium and followed a path of glinting restlessness though the dangers I could not see to the glittering edge of the sea. And I did what I had never done, I stepped into the sea, I wadded deeper and deeper and the sea craddled me and fell into it. I plunged into the salty warmth with ice ripples and the sandy floor kissed my cheek and sent me upwards to the glorious air. I swam a little and then lay on my back bouyed up and calmness engulfed me.
The heat pressed down on me and I seemed to become nothing and everything. When I stumbled ashore again the tide in a fare way. I stumbled up the beach and flopped on the sand for once not caring that it was in my hair and on my skin, when I sat up to go I put my hand out to push myself up and there beneith my palm was an equisite butterfly crafted from warm golden pearls, they were irregualr shapes but fitted together to form the creater. I feared I had broken it, but I had not.
I rushed back to Moike and placed it at the end of her rope braid. She was finished!
A cold wind lashed at me and clouds so dark that black is the only description rolled in and swollowed the sky in a matter of moments. Lightning cracked from the sky to the sea in a purple blaze, then a green and a blue, lightning dancing over the waves. Waves tinged orange with a strange storm light, rose up in choppy mountings driven forth by the wind.
A storm was coming but this was not the city with is light gemmed streets this was raw nature and the forces and destructive power contained within were more than I wanted to imagine.
I watched the wind strip the beach of litter and looked at Moike, she would be washed away!
I screamed at the sky, I shouted my defience and called the sea to protect that which it had helped me make. I raged into the darkness and the storm pulsed around me. A plume rose from the end of the sea, gold and shimmering, a great cloud that seemed somehow the essence of the storm light, it swooped upon me. Golden butterflies! Thousands and thousands of them, like the Moike’s hair orniment but living creatures I watched mezmerised as they descended upon the stone lady I had made and I slumped and wept as she was buried in golden fluttering wings.
The rain began to pour down, not rain drops but like a tape had been opened in the sky, I felt sure the butterflies delicate wings would be ripped to shreds, but they seemed to just melt into a a strage liquid light that rose into the air, my stone lady was gone, just an imprint where she had lain was left.
A hollow of disbelief opened up within me as I watched the golden cloud spread itself out, the was the odd ghost of a butterfly trailing the apperition that was forming before me there is the storm torn sky. It melted into the form, that form, the only form I could love, long limbs and tailing hair in a braid, gleaming gold and bright in storm brilliance. It molded itself into long limbs and smooth face. Perfection spun in the air with a bloom of lightning at its core. A ring of plasma pulsing, the blast scoured my mind and I fell a dazed full unable to hear anything other than my own thunding heart and the rush of my blood that I knew in that moment was an old part of the sea.
Gentle fingers reached down for me and I rose to look into Moike’s eyes, her hair was drapped over her shoulder in a long auburn braid set off with the butterfly of pearls, I staggered back from her but she smiled, such a small sad smile and drew me into her. Rain washed my fears away and I stared into green eyes and saw myself reflected for the first time.
We vanished into each other, me and my Moike.
Posted: Thursday, April 12th, 2012 @ 1:54 pm
Categories: Short Stories, Uncategorized.
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