Romance and water...

I wrote the following story a few weeks ago but felt intensely embarrassed by it until I plucked up the courage to show it to a friend. They kindly said it was very powerful and said I should I publish it.

So here it is. A strange little story of passion, need, love and friendship. Hope you like it. :)

Ocean and Rock Pool

He was the ocean.

He was deep, deeper than most men or women could fathom; and mysterious.

On any given day he could change his hue on a whim. One day green, green as apples in baskets, on another, an azure, crystal blue, and then changing with a flip of a coin to grey or black. He could be muted and uncoloured too, soft and forbidding all in one instant.

His depth was implied for no one could enter into it. He kept the swirling, murky truths of his heart hidden and contained, but they controlled him all the same – ever moving, ever silent, and ever changing. Yet, he was immutable, stronger than reason, but as fragile and as transient as time, too. A strange dichotomy to be sure but nevertheless, he was still but unchanging, and yet always in flux.

His moods changed with every moment, every day. One day he might be calm and peaceful, the next angry and savage, filled with cruel intent and lashing fury. In one day he could soothe lovers and torment survivors. He could rent nations apart and then fill their bellies with nourishing food. He was ill content, but full of himself. He knew his power but used it not as a weapon – he could not help the force of himself – he was as is and is to come.

Dark, beautiful, strange and omnipotent, his only flaw was that he was forever bound to the Moon and her wily constraints. She was his muse always and he was bound to her like no other thing on earth. He longed for her like food and riches.

But wait! There was another!

She was a Rock Pool on a vast shore.

She was pure, clear, still and as transparent as glass. She sheltered in the rocky outcrops on Oceans shirt-tails. She in turn gave shelter to the creatures that feared oceans intensity and she gave them respite from him and the searing day too. A friendly place, a warm place, her gift was a quiet thing, a sweet thing that would but give joy to mankind if they knew of it. She lived her life in retreat and hope for anything new.

And she was also removed from the world. Hard to see and understand because of her chosen place in this lifetime. She was alone, but not alone, swirling quietly under effervescent breezes in the places where few men dared to bother going.

She liked mankind, especially curious children, but they were rare in her life. The play of molluscs and the warmth of sunshine, the measure of eternal time and place were all she had to think upon. And then there was Him. Ocean - her need, her thrill, her fear and her wanting.

She lived for him alone. Jealous of Moon and her power over him and yet, needing her to drive him into her embrace at days end. She pleaded daily with Moon to allow her love to crash over the rocks, into her well-spring, thereby sustaining her for another day.

He filled her, fed her, re-created her and she needed him too much to deny him his assault. She awaited his wet-spray fingertips or rumbling full-frontal force of his being each day. He came to her - sometimes sweetly rising, sometimes crashing and violent - to come to her and refresh her to the depths of her transparent, bowl-shaped shallow heart.

And he needed her. She sustained him too, in many ways. She was his quiet retreat from an incessant urgent hunger in his deepest being. In her, he could find peaceful respite and calm retreat from the grind of eternal undulation. A piece of him at a time could rest there and grow lichen and sit, just quietly sit, and feel the sun bear down upon him, eating him up until he could bear it no more. She was a place where he could hide and the Moon could not haunt him, making him ache all over again with his need for Moon’s power over him.

He did not love Rock Pool like he did the Moon. Moon was obsession for him – a cruel never-ending obsession borne of passion and desire for impossible connection. But he did love Rock Pool in his way; after all he could not help but keep coming back at days end to her. It was as if he was inevitably drawn to her for the simple pleasure just to be with her. It would nag at him. Yes! This was his weakness, his one Achilles’ heel, it was this attraction that would not cease and yet could not impassion him.

At days break, she, Rock Pool, would see him leave again to wander the world in his own way, exploring possibilities on every shoreline, whilst she learned to wait and wish upon Moon for the tide of love to break over her again.

Thus Ocean and Rock pool lived all the days of their lives, apart and very different, but always one and the same in their essential natures.

They learned to live content with that.

© M. Pitman 2006