Short Story: Seafire

Lesha tossed the mask between her hands, running fingers along the well sewn seams. It had taken hours to craft this piece and it was perfect. She pulled it over her chin, securing the rough sharkhide onto her face. She peeked through the eyes of the dead sea creature and smiled inside its sharp hundred-toothed mouth. Temptation begged that she float to the surface and catch a glimpse of her reflection on the clear waves, but there was no time for vanity today. 

The lazy sway of seaweed tickled her stomach as she hurried through the water. Small fish fled when they caught sight of her, tiny fins creating a flurry of silver bubbles. Their fear was blood in water and she like was a shark. Instincts whispered for her to feast on that terror, to crush their bones between her teeth, to grind them to dust across her tongue, but she was no longer a creature ruled by baser needs.

Lesha forced down the hunger and swam faster, urging sinewy muscles forward, focusing on the task ahead. It wouldn’t be long before her little beauty was out of oxygen. The boy’s lovely tear-streaked face conjured in her mind.

This run would have to be quick.

Blurred rays of sunlight rippled through the water, burning orange specks into her vision. Webbed feet propelled her downward as she dived further into the ocean’s depths. She’d always been a creature of darkness with his best work done away from the light. 

Warmth prickled over her skin and transformed to searing heat. She adjusted the burning necklace, closing her eyes and smiling with the pain. This was one of his favorite sensations. He was calling to her from across the sea. The burning gem around her neck was a gentle reminder that the boy belonged to her and her alone. 

She needed him like she needed breath in her lungs.

An eastern current brushed over her outer membrane and she shivered in its warmth. The gill’s at her ribs rose as she sucked in a breath, warm water rushing in and out again.

 The ocean’s salty underbelly was a world long known to her, and she navigated it with ease. A shipwreck splintered across the sea floor, a forgotten graveyard of rotting wood and human cargo. Lesha maneuvered through the decay and ruin. There was nothing of interest there, he had already picked the remains clean of anything precious. 

Within the depths the dead sang, their warbling voices stretching towards the surface. Many a fool had fallen victim to their treacherous tune, lulled to their deaths by the sweet melody of sorrow. She swam just out of their reach, close enough that their mangled hum vibrated against her scales, but far enough that she wasn’t sucked into the void. The stench of the unclaimed bodies burned her nostril cavities.

Such pathetic creatures.

 Lesha sang in a baritone, the somber melody stretched through the sea. With the commanding song, she summoned his school of seahounds. They ebbed in her wake like a thousand probing arms. The creature’s shadowy feelers stretched out, eager to consume everything within their reach. She’d given them life. They shared one heartbeat. Her breath was theirs and in return her mandate was their will.

She pulled her sinewy frame deeper towards the prize, straining against the mounting tide.

It was close. 

She licked her lips, the salty tang of anticipation tingled her taste buds. Her multihued scales caught in the waning sea light, bursting in an explosion of color. 

Her smirked and sang a command for the sea hounds to devour. They spread their tentacles throughout the water and absorbed everything within their darkness. All plant life, vertebrates, and invertebrates alike disintegrated into their thirsting void. 

“Very good.” A satisfied grin spread over her face. “Let’s continue.” Dark laughter rumbled in the back of her throat. 

 The Seahounds were greedy things as they continued to lick the life from the surrounding area, leaving behind barron reef and shadows. They finished and followed their master deeper into the soulless sea. 

Lesha sensed his prize and imagined the way it would glisten next to the others. The thought made her mouth water. She slowed her pace, waving her arms in circular motions, then planted her feet on the ocean floor. The prize chanted from beneath the sand, calling. The cursed song floated through the wave. It was hers. 

Claws extended from her fingertips and fire exploded throughout cold veins. She swallowed the pain and tore through the sandy rock bottom. 

Long minutes passed as she plundered the sea. Dust and debris clouded the already murky waters. Lesha fell into an easy rhythm, she’d done this many times. Her muscles labored without thought, mind black with focus.

A flash of red coated her vision.

Within that blur, time stalled to a crawl. Her heart beat slow and thick in her chest. She stopped her work, blinking in confusion, and examined her trembling hands. 

Blood

She could have sworn there had been blood. A ghost of a memory returned like a sea gull’s feather floating from blue sky to ocean’s surface. 

The thought lingered on the tip of her tongue, she could nearly recall its flavor. Shaking her head, she forced herself to ignore the aberration and continued to what she was after. Burning doubt crept up the back of her skull and burrowed into her brain.

Then the boy’s tearful face surfaced and drowned out everything else. He was waiting. Lesha’s greedy claws ravaged the sea bottom. She liberated her crooning lovely from the muck, lungs burned from the effort. Her talons retracted and she wiped away the debris. The gem scintillated, reflecting light dancing in dark waters. A shudder escaped her lips and she melted, staring into its radiance. 

This treasure was thought to be lost. Only existing in legend and fable. Many a sea creature had wasted away in pursuit of its mournful song. And here it was humming like it had been made for her. She clutched it in a fist. Finding it was only the first step. There was still work to be done. 

The sea hounds growled at her back, dispelling her trance.

“Ok, let’s go.” She pocketed the stone, tucking it into his satchel and began the journey home. 

Her impatient beauty was waiting. 

Her lair rested at the base of the Henevi Trenches. She sank down until she was blanketed in darkness, and then further still. Deep-sea creatures shone through the shadowy depths like harrowing beacons, and she knew she was home. The bioluminescence lured unwitting prey to their death. 

The cave was carved into a giant anglerfish head. It had taken her almost a century to carve the intricate design. She swam headlong into the mouth, weaving through spiked teeth. 

Lanternfish posted along the interior hall that lead to the main chambers. The small fish quivered, their gills heaving with exertion. Their fragile tremors coaxed a smirk from her full lips. Wisps of blood trailed from their nailed fins. 

Lesha swam the short distance to her chamber and dismissed the sea hounds with a languid hum. They dispersed silently to a thousand different parts. 

She pressed spindly fingers into a hollow in the door that outlined his palm. The grove lit with green rays that seeped into her veins. She sang and the twin doors open, stone slabs groaning against rust-caked hinges. 

Her rooms consisted of three chambers, each decorated in lost ocean treasures. She threw her satchel over a chair and headed for the boy.  

A large orb floated in the center of the room and her beauty stood trapped there. Black candles stood sentry, burning with blue seafire. The light cast an azure haze throughout the chambers. 

The boy pounded on the spherical prison, his mouth open as he screamed, but Lesha couldn’t hear his terror. She circled the enclosure, marveling at the boys fine human features. The curve of her long neck, the deep hue of mahogany skin that glowed gold in the low light. Her hair hung passed her hips in black braids adorned in gold and seashells. She was his most perfect beauty yet. 

Her clawed at his throat, brown eyes bulging from their sockets. She closed in, until her face pressed against the barrier between them. The boy gasped, hand clenching his chest. She watched the boy with tears stinging her own eyes. Wetness slid from her bottom lid and melted into the sea. 

The beauty struggled for breath until the fight was gone and his arms hung limp at his sides. The boy started at her with pleading eyes, tears staining the hollow of his cheeks. He mouthed the word, “please,” and a tingle ripped from the base of her head and jolted through her groin. 

She pressed an arm through the spume bubble. Her body burned as she entered the energy field. 

The beauty sucked in an airless breath and withered like a flower that had taken too much sun. She rushed through the remainder of the barrier and caught him before he fell. Her footfalls crunched against the bone covered terrain, the sound reverberating through the desolation. Lesha hefted him into her arms, her gauzy robes draping over her arm. 

The prison was a tiny watertight capsule from the outside, but contained an entire world of bone and endless cosmos on the inside. Haunting shades of blue and pink vapor spread across a velvety blanket of black punctuated by bright stars. 

The boy’s head hung limp over her other arm, the expanse of his slender throat now open to her. Cradling him against her chest, she brought her lips to his mouth. Cool wind blew from her lungs into his. The boy’s chest expanded with the breath, and he sucked it in greedily. Slim fingers threaded through her coily hair, nails raking against her scalp, dragging her closer. 

Lesha dipped her tongue into his mouth and he opened for her. The sweet caress of lips set electricity buzzing through her system. All too soon, The boy’s breathing steadied and he broke their embrace. His honey eyes locked with her and her throat went dry.

She needed this time to be different. 

Her gills closed, and lungs opened, burning raw against unfiltered oxygen. She walked across the sea of bones to the bed and laid him gently across the feather down mattress. The Hendra bird sang mournfully at his side, a creature she’d forged with hesperornis feathers and seafire.

Lesha tucked an arm under the boy’s head and positioned him to her liking. Her fingers ached to squeeze him, to pull his flesh into her and make them one, but she resisted the urge and rolled into her back on the bed. Her eyes fell on the gaseous and dusty remnants of a supernova explosion splattered above them. 

Long ago, she’d walked through the shadow of death and tore through the celestial gates so she could carve out a section of the universe to bring back here. It had taken countless sea cycles to stitch the heavens to the baldachin of this secluded place. 

Her swept over him from foot to head. The boy lay loose in her arms, but there was a coldness seeping from his pores.

“I built this for you.” She gestured to the nebulous sky. “Are you not satisfied, my beauty?” 

“I don’t belong here. Allow me return to my own world.” His voice was thick, and Lesha could feel the pain festering in his chest. 

“Your world,” she scoffed. ”You were dead when I found you.” She let the words hang in the air, filling the space between them. “I revived your flesh with my seafire. I bought your soul, beauty, and I paid my price for the journey it took to bring you back from the spiritlands. You are mine and this is now your world.” 

The Hendra stopped crooning, its final hollow note echoed through the abyssal void. 

Her beauty nestled into her side and rubbed a pointed nose against the crook of her neck. It was a delightful deception, but she allowed her eyes to flutter shut. She breathed in his scent of sea jade and sugar cane, tugging him closer.

 “I don’t want to become like the others. Let me go,” he rasped. His breath was ghost along her skin.

“You leave and you die. We have a bond forged in blood. It can’t broken.” She tore her eyes from his lovely and stared out into the nothingness. As far as feet could travel there was only star-studded space and an endless trail of flesh picked remains. “We struck a bargain.” 

“Please,” he breathed, his gaze slicing low and to fragile flowers that bloomed between the cracks of the skeletal ground. “This is a graveyard of conquests and I’m waiting to become those bones, trapped forever in this valley of death. How could you expect me to be happy?” 

Lesha remained silent and continued to look at her creations. 

“This is clearer than any night sky in the human realm, but still it is not enough?” she asked, purring against his back. “Am I not enough?” She rolled to face him and reached out to tuck a stray braid behind his ear.

“You?” He snorted, recoiling from her touch. “Look at the suffering you’ve wrought. How many have there been? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? More? It’s as endless as this sky you’ve painted.” 

Molten needles sliced through her nerve endings. She pressed trembling fingers into pulsing temples to block out the pain. A piercing flash of scarlet. 

So much blood. 

It wasn’t a hallucination. The grinding of her teeth filled her mind until all other sound drowned out. Flames licked at the base of her gut and spread throughout her abdomen. Before she could stop herself, she struck the boy across the face. The impact cracked across the night like thunder rumbling in the distance. 

Her beauty face her, uncowed, blood dribbling from her split bottom lip. The boy dabbed the wound with her fingertips and winced, “You prove my point. What is it you are so afraid of? What turned you into this…monster?” Her gaze was as lifeless as the space around them. 

His words funneled directly to the core of who she was and their weight settled there. She preferred to leave those wounds untouched. “I’m sorry,” she said, a fragile piece of her sliced open. She shoved the weakness down, masking it with a smile.

“Coward.” The boy spit blood into the white bedclothes. “Leave me.” 

“My beauty-” 

“I am not your damn beauty,” he shouted. “I have a name, given to me by my father’s father. I am a son of the Renjani tribe. My name is my own and no matter what you do, you can never take that from me.” 

Lesha had an unnerving urge to shake him—to rattle his brain until that name he held fell from his head, so he could devour it too.

Wresting with the urge to hurt, she stood. “You’ll need breath again and by then I hope you’ll have changed your mind.” She stalked across the dead to the barrier. She refused to turn, too afraid she would find more precious tears staining his fragile face. 

She swam from his chambers and followed the winding corridors down to her workroom. The heat from the forge sucked precious minerals from her thin membrane. She inspected her his tools and tied an apron around her waist.

There was work to be done. 

She hummed, setting her sea hounds to task and they filled the hearth with scoria. She sang over the dark coals. Pressure built in her temples and the aching in her head returned. She had to complete the song. With her melody she coaxed blue seafire to life. High flames burst over the grate and fueled the forge, adding excruciating heat to the room. 

The hounds produced her prize from their inky mists. Lesha took it carefully in hand, admiring the simple splendor. 

She worked by the twinkling light of lanternfish. Her tendons strained as she shaped the jewel. 

No matter how she worked, thoughts of her beauty beat at the gates of her mind. Hands covered in blood, in a body that wasn’t her and yet so familiar. By the time she’d finished smelting the gem and pounding it flat with the anvil, she was shaking. From the tiny stone, she’d produced three scales. She brought them to the light for inspection. 

Perfection. Protection.

This was some of his best work. Lesha couldn’t wait any longer and rushed to her cabinet. She rummaged through the contents searching for the tear-shaped vial. She popped the cork with a thumb and drained the liquid. The vile substance burned her throat and spread rapidly through her veins. The foulness ulcerated her nerves and created a network of red molten lines beneath her skin. 

Her outer layers oozed, slowly slushing from her body. Sucking in a deep breath, she braced for the agony to come and plunged the plates into her forearm. They sank easily through muscles and sinew. She hammered them in place, the pain surging to her bones. A growl ripped from her throat, unable to suppress it. Within heartbeats her flesh hardened painfully around the scales and dragged them into the deepest folds of her skin. Blood rushing through her ears, she was numb to everything but the pain and she welcomed it.

She was safe. Nothing could hurt her now. She was strong—so strong.

 The new scales glimmered as she held up her forearm to the light. The lanternfish flinched and flicked its fins, trying fruitlessly to escape. Her arms twinged and he smiled, beaming into his reflection. He was almost complete. His right arm was now fully covered in kaleidoscopic plates. Only three bare spots remained on her legs. She would find more treasures tomorrow. 

At her back, the hounds howled, their piercing cry reverberating in the small workspace. 

“What is it?” Lesha snapped, half annoyed, but as soon as she’d said the words his heart knew.

His beauty.

She swam like it was her last breath, straining towards the surface, strokes frantic and clumsy in her haste. She reached his chambers and sang the words, honeyed music poured from her lips and the doors groaned opened. She scanned the room. No sign of an intruder. Everything was as she’d left it. Except her beauty, he was gone.

She rushed from the cave and into the outside sea. She sang to her sea hounds, commanding them to search for the boy’s scent. The dark beasts took off and Lesha eagerly followed their lead. Seconds crawled like hours and minutes like days. Before long, Lesha had swam into dark, forbidden waters. She spun, trying to regain a sense of direction. 

“Lesha,” a lone voice crooned. 

She turned and searched for the sound. 

No one

Her brows knit, eyes straining for some monster lurking in the darkness. She twisted left. Right. But there was only depthless ocean. 

She flicked her feet and skirted through the placid current, continuing after the beauty. 

“Lesha,” a chorus rang out around her. 

It hadn’t been in his head. Something was out there, calling. She stopped, sputtering in the water to find the source. Still there was nothing. Her heart crushed against his chest like tidal waves swallowing shore. 

The sea swelled and sucked her into its under tide, sweeping her from the clarity of the surface and towards the shadows of the trenches. Her body dragged toward the harrowing call of their song. 

The voices crooned her name softly, “Lesha…Lesha,” in their watery melody. 

The tide pulled him further into the abyss, its thirsting cries louder—hungrier. The sun’s weak rays disappeared in the deep. Lesha’s scales illuminated in the dim, casting haunting spears of multicolored light into the waves.

The ocean rumbled with the might of crashing thunder and vibrated through the waves. Sand on the seafloor churned, growing stronger with each breath. Lesha’s instincts screamed for her to flee, but her body remained frozen—trapped in the sweet amber, lulled by their harmony.

Water washed over her, threatening to break, to destroy. 

She wasn’t safe. 

The scales did nothing against the cyclone that funneled and battered her with its powerful current. Her gut smashed into his throat and bitter bile flooded his mouth. She flipped over and over and over. Until there was no up or down on the ebbing brink of unconsciousness. 

Without warning, the sea storm spit her out and she fell into the calm of the eye, amid the reefs and the bottom feeders. All shuddered before the powerful gale. Lesha attempted to rise but her legs were jelly fish and her muscles water.

The sea continued to funnel around her, creating a circular wall rising a hundred feet high. She lay crumpled and half buried in sand, strength leaching from her with each breath. Her hound’s wailing cut through her agony, their mists faded to reveal decaying tentacles. She clutched her chest, their pain echoing through her. 

“My pets.” She caressed their limbs and they turned to brittle ash at her fingertips. “No,” she breathed. The hounds shattered into countless dark particles, their cries ringing through the storm. The pieces floated skyward and above the ocean’s churning surface. Her eyes followed their ethereal trail and heart stuttered as they disappeared. They had been at her side so long. What did the world look like without them

“Lesha,” the voices persisted, dragging her attention toward their building rage. They sang in a sacred cantillation that grew louder and fuller. The symphony filled the sea. Cerulean light erupted from the water’s spinning surface and morphed into a woman with the head of a Great White. 

Lesha shield her eyes from the blinding seafire with trembling hands. A howl shredded her throat as her corneas sizzled under the blaze. A ravaging wind whipped her hair, black curls tangling into tight knots.

With each pounding of her heart, the floating before her monster changed form, foam and seafire licking over its features and recasting it into giant ocean creatures. The sea beast shimmered again, its brilliant hide reflecting light from the spectrum

“What are you?”  she screamed into the roaring waters, scales burning.

The beast was silent, its blue eyes wild, warning of the danger to come. And in that silence a strange knowing came over her. These events were no accident, she had been lured to this consecrated place. 

“Where is my beauty?” she asked on a dry throat

No answer came. But the monster continued its song that rang as brilliant as its skin. The waters around her were not the same as they had been moments before. More sea creatures followed the call of the tessellating voice. They circuited her, dancing in time with the song. The whole of the ocean looked down on her, judging with the weight of their gaze. 

Her mouth went slack. This was a place of legend. She had only heard whisperings of it on the mouth of the salt dwellers. The sea had summoned her to the Aperture of Gods, the portal between worlds. This place held a strange familiarity. The pounding in her temples returned, she gritted her teeth against the pain.

Lesha looked up into the epicenter of the storm, waves waltzing violently around him. The moon shone brightly against darkness. Specks of light littered the black night and a shooting star arced across the sky, searing a white path in its wake. A link broke in the chain of her soul, her tie to the boy severed, and she knew he’d been returned to the spiritlands. 

“You took him from me?” she asked, the walls of her throat gluing together. 

“You are asking all the wrong questions,” The monster sang with a thousand voices and shape-shifted into a massive puffer fish, its flesh clinquant in the dark waters. 

Lesha’s eyes widened at its radiance, she’d never seen anything of its like in all her centuries of travel. She would flay its hide and add the beautiful carcass to her collection. Her palms itched with greed. It no longer mattered that her favorite thing had been lost. If she could have this, then she could finally stop collecting—she would finally be whole. The image of herself covered in the magical scales rang forcefully through her mind’s eye. 

Lesha opened her mouth and a song poured over her tongue. She used every inflection and play on pitch she knew to summon the power needed to destroy the sea beast. She with her heart, from the hollow depth of her stolen sole. She sang as the tids shifted and churned the opposite direction. She and sang but nothing, the familiar surge through her veins was only a paltry crumb in comparison to the might of the entire sea.

Her hands shook.  

It was gone. 

The ocean had refused his call and that could only mean one thing. 

“You dare try to smite us! Lesha have you forgotten?” The sea beast bellowed, its head mutating into a Mauisaurus. The ancient sea creature’s neck stretched high above the water’s surface and into the open air.

Lesha cowered under its towering height and her beauty’s words came barreling back to her, his soft voice calling, “coward”. 

“You chose to cleave yourself from the humans and we accepted you. And this how you repay that sacrifice?”

“What sacrifice?” 

Hazy memories wafted into her mind of a life forgotten. She had been a woman once. An outcast with dark thirstings. She spent the days toiling in the vineyards to make her fortune, and her nights hunting for men to make her own. Her hands were always stained red, in the fruit she used to make wine and in the lifeblood or men who dared take too much. 

There were moments of clarity, where the haze would momentarily lift and she could glimpse the terror she’d become. She tried to give it up when her father discovered her dark urges, but the thirsting always returned and when she denied them they came back stronger. She owed the their blood. Father was going to have her locked away, he was just like the other men who only ever took and took and took. Her only choice had been to make her father one of hers. After she buried him deep beneath the vines of the vineyard clarity hurdled through her like blinding white light—she couldn’t see anything but the blood, all the bodies buried under her fields. Staring at her hands coated black with fertilzed soil and slick with blood she rain off the cliff and into the ocean. 

“Your salt tears called to us and we brought you from death. With our seafire we forged you anew. But look what you have become. You took our gift and used it to defile us.”

The weight of her re-found truth settled heavy; she fell back on her haunches in deference, facing the sea in silence. The moment slowed. Air rushed in and out her ear drums in time with her pounding heart, building pressure that promised to kill. 

Had she really been a woman once? Lesha looked down at her false scales. She’d been collecting beautiful things for so long that she’d forgotten what she needed to protect herself from.

“You must pay for your greed, Lesha. You owe us a debt…and we will be paid.” 

She swallowed, unable to bring herself to fight it.

They were right, she was the monster in this fable. 

“It is time you return what was given.” 

The natural melody of the ocean hushed into a low trembling whisper and silence overtook the waters. Then as suddenly as the music had gone it came gushing back, threatening to bend her like the fragile seaweed billowing in the waves. 

Her back slammed into a boulder and pain rippled through her spine as it splintered under the force of the blow. The beautiful scales tore themselves from her flesh and sucked into the whirlwind of the cyclone. Exquisite torture blinded her as her body shredded itself. The agony surpassed mortal outcries, silently she suffered, split and slivered until she was nothing. Because she had always been nothing in face of the mighty. 

Then it was done.

“Open your eyes and see,” they said together, her voice joining the symphony. 

Lesha’s breath returned in ragged pants, the familiar motion now foreign. A million microscopic organisms breathed in rhythm inside her. The entire ocean swelled and compressed each time she inhaled and exhaled. When she calmed enough to forcefully pry back her vision it was a sensation beyond the physical. She looked through a thousand-thousand eyes and formed one cohesive image of the vast ocean.  

“You are us and we are you,” they sang as one. “This is the beginning of your eternal price.” 

The last part of herself screamed for freedom, struggling…and was severed by the might of the sea god’s will. The feeble piece wasn’t strong enough to survive without the whole. It withered to dust, and disappeared with the current. 

The ocean and she were one.