In This Broken Kingdom

The ocean roars, but it is not the water he knows. Away from the trees he follows its voice, until at last like a dreaming field it unfolds: iron grey and gallant white, writhing on the rocks. Below the bald faces of implacable cliffs, above a snarl of mangrove trees, Seiji is little more than a shadow. He scours the sea with dark eyes, and something in him aches to gaze upon it. If - but he shakes his head, as if to shake away the thought, and smiles to himself, his dark eyes narrowing. He is alone. The trees reach eager branches toward his flanks. Whispers on his skin: creaking laughter, secrets reeking of salt and darkness. What do mangroves know? They speak in the soft, patient voices of trees. Ugly trees, perhaps, but Seiji pauses at the roots of one and his liquid gaze turns up, up, to glimpse shards of sky beyond. He leans forward inch by inch until his breath pools on the bark: a whisper, a secret of his own. What do mangroves know? A moment ago, he spied the silver scales of a little fish in one of the tidal pools. Ergo: soft bones clutched somewhere in the darkness of these roots. Do mangroves speak of death? If they did, what would they say? Breath tainted with salt pours in and out of his lungs. The fishes moving under him; the ocean roaring in its bed. What mangroves know, they cannot say. He nods to the tree, a little knowing and a little foolish, and skips away. His hooves like music on the rocks: jump, jump, jump. Muscle standing out beneath the black skin with each landing. The false wing on his side ripples, dreaming of flight the way the mangroves dream of dead fish, and he is a radiant thing in the twilight realm at the edge of the tide. In his wake: the facet of hope, a miniature sun, his own shooting star. Hop, hop, hop. He clings to the ridges of rock separating the pools. Vies with the trees for purchase, but never jostles them. He is too graceful for that. Remembering, long ago, a game like this: hooves light upon the shore, laughing voices calling out. He avoids the water now as then, each leap bringing him nearer the body of the sea. The pools grow; he slips. The shock of the cold. The silver glimmer of the water splashing up, droplets glimmering in a stray sunbeam. Through Seiji’s body a tremor of surprise; still, again. His head turns slowly as he scans the pools. I lose.

img by Tildae @ flickr