Empress Of Sea And Sky

Audrey stood high atop a cliff overlooking the immensity of an ocean frothing with tall insistent waves that crashed on the rock formations far below her. Down to receive the assault were caves that filled and drained, filled and drained, in a rhythm almost predictable. Over centuries this perpetual erosion had scarred the base with striations ending at about fifty feet, after which green carpeted the ascent. The caves were a sibilant chorus that could surely be deciphered by one attuned to their witness. Occasionally a gull would venture into a cave, careful of its rhythm, to chase the nickel shimmer of a fish, a predator lured to risk everything. Occasionally the tide betrayed its pulse, either drowning the gull or smashing it against the rock walls as it tried to recover.

The ocean warred stubbornly against the shore for dominion, ever so slowly dissolving its face with the ancient force of an insane self winding clock. Intervals of detente were counterbalanced by sieges of varied intensity. Audrey's hair, which she had so tightly bound that morning, was now undone and flailed behind her as a tattered black flag, as though she had planted herself in victory. The winds that climbed the cliff were made witchy by the ascent and curled around her petite form as an exhilarating threat. Invisible hands woke her body. She crowned herself empress of sea and sky, even imagining the wind as her soldier and servant, rather than tormentor. However, this conceit was to be short lived, as she would soon find herself at the mercy of its curling momentum. While she yet imagined herself in command, she found songs within the hissing chorus of the caves and sent its magic out into the distance, where a storm was dangling legs of lightning like a levitated Portuguese Man of War, hiding in false night at noon, in banks of mountainous black cloud and a curtain of blue-green rain, a wall traveling towards her with wet violence, evidence of which now began to sting her face and drench her blouse.

A large paper white gull now rose in spirals from the caves to hover before her. It was an arrest for both parties, the gull subtly and rapidly adjusting its wings to remain stationary, never breaking stare, fixing her as if to demand an explanation or deliver one. This made the tension of the storm particular, as though it had funneled itself through the gull's eyes in razor focus and was now exacting something; as though the storm had discovered her spying on it and was incorporating her into its design, having sent its chief ambassador to negotiate the interface. The silence of the ambassador burned her body with its unyielding gaze. Her blouse was soaked through. She tore it from herself to reveal small large nippled breasts unsheathed and erect, as though they pointed up accusingly at the gull, whose hover fluctuated with the wind's increased velocity. Still unblinking he stared. He seared her eyes with undefined provocation, and almost like an inkblot test, she yielded to her own impulses, attributing it all to the will of the fast approaching storm.

Realizing she had forfeit her will, she surrendered her crown by removing her skirt to reveal a profuse dark flame that overran the edge of her white panties, also showing through the thin fabric its mound of black. Then she stepped out of her them and astoundingly, the gull blinked, as if to say: this is a good beginning. He began to carve a sideways figure eight as the curling wind grew close to overwhelming him, and this sparked a fever inside her sex. She cupped it and added her guttural moan to the bass flute of the caves, tugging each thick nipple in rapid succession as the curtain of rain reached them. Her body shone wet and the gull's pattern sped up, like the interior of an engine. Only by imposing this form in velocity could he remain in front of her, for the storm was nearly upon them. Now she spread her arms to mimic his pattern, finding it and matching tempo. Her underarms were as abundant as her sex and as matted.

The gull was blinking rapidly, beyond mere observation. Thunder boomed militarily and the wind driven rain molested her entire form. Her sex was an oven and her body a sensitive antenna for the blast of light and sound. The synchronization of their dance built a pressure inside her chest and sex and traveled up her spine to produce a delirium of laughter and tears, both muted by the roar of what was now beating them, until the gull flew at her sex, just as she orgasmed. She flew out over the violence of the surf, into the heart of the storm, all distinction erased. Her submission had returned her crown and she presided over a splendid chaos, now rising in spirals inside tornadic, invisible iron, the empress of sky and sea, returned to her from a distance unknown, and with a new unspeakable name. The chorus of the caves would now sing of her until a successor stood atop the cliffs to decipher the storm.

It was six months before fishermen, dangerously close to the rocks, discovered her bones pinned within a cave in a pattern similar to the mirror dance of her death. The captain's sixteen year old daughter had come along for the day, and she studied the body intently before venturing with her eyes up the emerald skin of the cliff, enchanted by the clouds that encased it toward the top, obscuring its exact height. These images would seed her dreams and wake her body with an exhilarating threat. Her fear was not without a hint of something feverish and alien, as though a life unknown now beckoned to her with songs she felt familiar with. As the boat pulled away from the sharp rocks, she looked back at the skeleton, wondering at its name.