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a shallow life
I.
You are two. You enjoy the sand between your toes and the water over your gills. Your lusus is a huge, great beast who holds you like you’re glass in between the frills of his fins. He sings to you, your lusus does. His voice is low low low and it rumbles deep in your chest, fills your blood with sea music and salt and the playful rhythm of the water and the moons.
When you are tired, you grab one of his fins and he pulls you to your underwater hive and you sleep as soundly as any wiggler could ever hope to. Your dreams are heavy and filled with bright colors. You wake smiling, claws itching for something, but you don’t know what.
II.
You are three. You are annoyed with your lusus, so you stay up on the beach where his voice can’t reach you and neither can he. It’s lonely but the cool air against your drying skin makes you shiver pleasantly. Your eyes fall to the moons and their reflections in the ocean surface. There is a storm coming in a few days you realize by the unsteady wash of the water against the sand.
For a moment, your gaze is drawn up to the lights high up over the hill where you know there is a hive grouping, a number of trolls who make their living on the docks a few miles down the beach. You have never been there. Your lusus has forbidden it. Your lusus has forbidden a lot of things lately. He wants you to stay in the water with him all the time, which is really why you’re annoyed with him in the first place.
When you finally return to the ocean, you are completely dry and the moons have drifted somewhere behind you. You are intrigued by the salty stiffness of your hair and the way it curls up tight now that it’s not wet. You tell yourself you’ll come back up more often. You tell yourself one day you’ll walk to the hive grouping and make a friend of someone tangible instead of just over trollian.
III.
You are four. You have decided the moons and the sea are auspistice. The sea and the green moon push and pull at each other and the pink moon tells them when it’s gone too far and they need to quit it. Of course, your lusus has taught you differently, but you’d rather tell yourself stories then listen to him. In the past sweep, mostly as an act of defiance, you have used the last bit of time you have with the drones to make them expand your hive up onto the beach. You think nothing of this particular privilege. As far as you know, everyone can do this whenever they want.
You still have not been to the hive grouping or maybe you’d know better. Every night you do not go, you feel worse though. You want so much to slip away from this beach and find out about the landdwellers. You have only read stories after all. They seem like fascinating, if rather simple sort of trolls.
The moons are directly overhead and you’re craning back to watch them when you hear him coming. You turn to watch him and he’s much older then you and he’s storming across the sand and there’s a riot of color thrown across his face. It reminds you of the things you see in your dreams, but you only think this a moment before you head back towards the water, not afraid so much as nervous and faintly curious. But then he catches you and his claws score your back, tear your clothes, and you hurt.
He strikes you viciously across the face and your lusus breaks the surface of the water to defend you. Your guardian, he makes two sounds you will never forget: one so low it makes your ears ring with the threat of it and another that is a sudden, awful shriek. There is blood and salt water everywhere and your claws find a neat place around your indigo attacker’s throat. His flesh gives to you like that was everything it was ever fated to do, and you leave yourself for awhile.
You do not come back for a very long time.
IV.
You are four and a half.
The knife in your hand reflects the moons back into your eyes. Then there’s purple pooling in the dry cracks in your lips, rolling in heavy drops down the blade and you can’t see anything in the ruined steel anymore.
You walk on across the rocks until your feet are bleeding too, trying to make your gills fall away as easily as your fins did.
V.
You are five. You have met a girl who brings the world back into focus. You have learned more about ghosts from her in the past perigee then you ever thought you would and, better then this, you somehow still want to know more.
Her lusus chatters at you, plucks fondly at your hair and you do not have to work at forgetting your old one. This is enough. You find a place, another hive, and once you have gone through the pantomime of ridding it of ghosts, you settle in as comfortably as you ever were in your old hive.
You do not see the ocean anymore. You do not see the beach, or the moons shining in a star speckled sky. The lights drown out the stars here, dull the colors of the moons but that’s okay you think. They are not reminders you would’ve wanted anyway…
You are two. You enjoy the sand between your toes and the water over your gills. Your lusus is a huge, great beast who holds you like you’re glass in between the frills of his fins. He sings to you, your lusus does. His voice is low low low and it rumbles deep in your chest, fills your blood with sea music and salt and the playful rhythm of the water and the moons.
When you are tired, you grab one of his fins and he pulls you to your underwater hive and you sleep as soundly as any wiggler could ever hope to. Your dreams are heavy and filled with bright colors. You wake smiling, claws itching for something, but you don’t know what.
II.
You are three. You are annoyed with your lusus, so you stay up on the beach where his voice can’t reach you and neither can he. It’s lonely but the cool air against your drying skin makes you shiver pleasantly. Your eyes fall to the moons and their reflections in the ocean surface. There is a storm coming in a few days you realize by the unsteady wash of the water against the sand.
For a moment, your gaze is drawn up to the lights high up over the hill where you know there is a hive grouping, a number of trolls who make their living on the docks a few miles down the beach. You have never been there. Your lusus has forbidden it. Your lusus has forbidden a lot of things lately. He wants you to stay in the water with him all the time, which is really why you’re annoyed with him in the first place.
When you finally return to the ocean, you are completely dry and the moons have drifted somewhere behind you. You are intrigued by the salty stiffness of your hair and the way it curls up tight now that it’s not wet. You tell yourself you’ll come back up more often. You tell yourself one day you’ll walk to the hive grouping and make a friend of someone tangible instead of just over trollian.
III.
You are four. You have decided the moons and the sea are auspistice. The sea and the green moon push and pull at each other and the pink moon tells them when it’s gone too far and they need to quit it. Of course, your lusus has taught you differently, but you’d rather tell yourself stories then listen to him. In the past sweep, mostly as an act of defiance, you have used the last bit of time you have with the drones to make them expand your hive up onto the beach. You think nothing of this particular privilege. As far as you know, everyone can do this whenever they want.
You still have not been to the hive grouping or maybe you’d know better. Every night you do not go, you feel worse though. You want so much to slip away from this beach and find out about the landdwellers. You have only read stories after all. They seem like fascinating, if rather simple sort of trolls.
The moons are directly overhead and you’re craning back to watch them when you hear him coming. You turn to watch him and he’s much older then you and he’s storming across the sand and there’s a riot of color thrown across his face. It reminds you of the things you see in your dreams, but you only think this a moment before you head back towards the water, not afraid so much as nervous and faintly curious. But then he catches you and his claws score your back, tear your clothes, and you hurt.
He strikes you viciously across the face and your lusus breaks the surface of the water to defend you. Your guardian, he makes two sounds you will never forget: one so low it makes your ears ring with the threat of it and another that is a sudden, awful shriek. There is blood and salt water everywhere and your claws find a neat place around your indigo attacker’s throat. His flesh gives to you like that was everything it was ever fated to do, and you leave yourself for awhile.
You do not come back for a very long time.
IV.
You are four and a half.
The knife in your hand reflects the moons back into your eyes. Then there’s purple pooling in the dry cracks in your lips, rolling in heavy drops down the blade and you can’t see anything in the ruined steel anymore.
You walk on across the rocks until your feet are bleeding too, trying to make your gills fall away as easily as your fins did.
V.
You are five. You have met a girl who brings the world back into focus. You have learned more about ghosts from her in the past perigee then you ever thought you would and, better then this, you somehow still want to know more.
Her lusus chatters at you, plucks fondly at your hair and you do not have to work at forgetting your old one. This is enough. You find a place, another hive, and once you have gone through the pantomime of ridding it of ghosts, you settle in as comfortably as you ever were in your old hive.
You do not see the ocean anymore. You do not see the beach, or the moons shining in a star speckled sky. The lights drown out the stars here, dull the colors of the moons but that’s okay you think. They are not reminders you would’ve wanted anyway…