Ghost Ocean

[fictitiouswhimsigot]

A Superior Skill

The girl sits by the window. The winds howl outside with the storm and all the fury of nature is held back by a single pane of glass. She watches it, wordlessly, while wrapped in a blanket. A mug sits near her, cold and untouched.

She watches as the wind thickens with rain. She waits.

Minutes pass before she spots one, drifting against the wind. A small shell in the air, green and translucent. Then another, and another. Suddenly, a long, scaled shape darts out from above and snaps at the drifting school of shelled creatures, scattering them. The distant trees seem to get softer, and more indistinct. The wind gives way to a quiet pulsing, the air slows down and cools.

The girl watches the grass drift lazily and the trees sway slowly and gently. A large worm spins lazily just outside the glass. It pulses with colors as it extends and retracts spines, coiling through the air.

She reaches out to the window, pressing her hand against the cold glass. The girl stands up and swings the window open, and-

The sound of rain enters the room, the wet cold wind howls in. There’s nothing but trees and grass.

The girl closes the window and sits down. She waits.

(Superior) Ghost Ocean 0: You wear earrings in the shape of extinct sea life and enjoy swimming.

(Superior) Ghost Ocean 1: You dream of deep dark seas, of coastlines you will never find on any map. Your nights are filled with long dead sea life and the pulse of the currents around you. Sometimes, when you wake, they remain drifting in your vision, if only for a time.

(Superior) Ghost Ocean 2: You can see the shorelines now. You can feel the pulse of the tide around you. The fish see you and dance with you. You are the sea that was, once. It rains heavily near you, frequently, as your soul calls out for the waters it lost. There are seagulls and stranger birds.

(Superior) Ghost Ocean 3: You have unwoven into the translucent waves, oh dead sea. You ride extinct tides with a thousand lost species that you know by name. You range across the land and into the depths, a memory of a sea lost. Sometimes you push out into the world with poltergeist tides, phantasmal storms and piscine visions. You can no longer leave the shorelines of yesterday. Only living seas change.

(Superior) Ghost Ocean 4: Oh Panthalassa, mother of seas. Once the only and every, now lost. What do you think in your depths; what things once lost are found in your memory of yourself? If you rose up in wrath and fury, would you drag the land once more into the sea? Lay down your furies, your storms of legend and leviathans of life’s eve. Please, please sea-mother, sleep and remember: Life is for the living, memory for the dead.