~Content warning: this story contains a depictions of drowning, starvation, and implications of suicide and death.~
He woke up on his hands and knees, hurling. Hit gut clenched and released, purging saltwater through his open mouth. He heard himself gasp and cough between guttural grunts, retching even after he was drained empty.
Dry.
He was so dry. His lips hurt. His throat stung. There was a broiling warmth on the back of his neck and his arms. Sunshine.
His palms were on hot sand, bright and white as the terrible sun. He could feel the endless, fine grains scratching the webbed skin between his fingers, lodging in the creases of his hands. But to his eyes it was just a flat, white sheet.
His vision was blurry. When his vomiting had subsided, he heard the slow, monotone song of the ocean's waves. He looked up. The wide beach stretched into the horizon. He lifted his body upright, resting on his knees, and rubbed the film from his eyes. To his left were the pristine gradients of azure and foam of the ocean beneath a stark, cloudless sky. To the right were muddy brows and deep greens of a lush jungle.
He tried to stand and, with difficulty, got his feet beneath him. He teetered a bit, his arms stretched out, as he gradually found his center of balance. Then, he was able to think.
What did he know?
He was a man. Looking down, he saw his hands were tanned and calloused. There was strength in his arms and shoulders, though it was weighed down by exhaustion. His thoughts were difficult to pick out, like his mind was still adrift in the distant horizon.
He was on a ship. That is, before he was on the beach.
There were bits of splintered wood littered here and there around him. A shipwreck? He tried to remember:
The ship groaned. It cried and writhed in darkness. Up and down, to and fro, crashing against the barrage of a storm. His clothes were drenched. Rain beat against his face, flooding his eyes and lips.
(God, he was so thirsty.)
A storm. Lightning. Flashes of light and blasts of sound that rang through his chest. There was a terrible explosion, with shouting, and a final scream from the ship. There was fire. Then, there came a long, cold darkness.
But what came before? Where was he going?
Who
was he? There was nothing -- that horrible ocean storm was his entire existence, set in the middle of two boundless voids. Not even a name. Not even the face of a mother.
He began to hyperventilate. Looking left, right, and back, he started turning aimlessly, trapped in an abstract cage. Hot. Dry. Delirious with thirst. A stranded idiot. Better he had succumbed to the ocean.
Then, by reflex, he took a slow, deep breath, inhaling with his gut to saturate his lungs. He exhaled slowly, his lips pursed into a tight outlet, letting his chest deflate. He did this again, and then a second time. He listened to the rhythm of the waves. He felt his heartbeat. His mind cooled from its frothing boil to a simmer.
What he needed, first and foremost, was water.
The dense treeline offered no obvious fruit. He could venture within -- but what lurked in that jungle? He brought his hand to his brow, shielding his eyes to look down the meandering beach. There was a fault some distance ahead. A silver crack in the streak of pearl-white sand. A mirage? Or an estuary.
One leg lifted, bringing its foot ahead, the upper body tilted forward, the center of balance shifting, calves and thighs flexing. The other leg swung forward, past the first, planting its foot. Then the first; then the second. Gradually, his muscles and bones remembered the locomotion of walking.
He awkwardly loped toward the distant stream with all his concentration. As soon as his mind wandered, taking attention away from his legs and feet, he would stagger and nearly fall onto the sand.
He came to the muddy sandbanks and began following the lush floodplain upstream. The wet grass felt nice against his bare chafed feet. The water gradually cleared. He dipped his palm into the shallow flow, the scars on his hands screaming with relief, and scooped it up to his mouth. The cold wetness felt wonderful upon his lips. But it was too brackish. He continued further up, stopping every several steps to try the water.
Finally, he found a spot that tasted fresh enough. He knelt in the water and bowed down, taking in mouthfuls. The wetness pouring down his throat felt divine.
As he drank, he heard footsteps approach him, splashing through the shin-deep water. He looked up and saw a blue-skinned woman standing over him. Her shoulder-length, straight, wet hair was a chalk white, the same color as her nipples and moist lips. Red slit pupils sat like jewels in her golden irises. A long, flat tail swung to and fro behind her, catching sunlight with its rainbow highlights.
The man pointed up to her and said, matter-of-factly, "you're a nixie."
She cocked her head, studying him with a curious smile, and then offered her hand to him.
His dark eyes looked detachedly at her open hand. The nymph -- the nixie -- had come just as his anxiety was returning, now that his thirst was settled. She saw how sunburned his neck and shoulders were, and said, "I know a nice, cool, dark place to rest in."
The man knew what she was. What she could do. And after a few seconds, he decided to take her hand anyway. She led him through the shallow pools into a cave.
They walked barefoot on the slippery stone. She held his hand tightly, careful not to let him slip or stumble. Sunlight streamed through scattered cavities in the ceiling. It was like being in a chamber of stars.
She brought him to a stream of clean, fresh water and bid him to sit and drink, which he did. She watched him for several gulps and then asked,
"What's your name?"
And the man, looking up at her, shrugged. "Don't know."
"You don't know your name?"
Another shrug.
"You don't know who you are?"
His dark eyes drifted away from her, peering into the void in his mind. The ship. The lightning.
"I washed ashore from a ship that sank. I came from the beach."
The nixie nodded, smiling, her sharp teeth stained yellow. "I know. I was watching you stumble on the sand! I'd come to find trinkets and nice things from the wreck," she explained, giddily, "because there was a
great
storm last night, and storms like that bring treats to my waters."
The nixie knelt down and set her warm, wet, webbed hand on his wrist. She cooed affectionately to him, "and what a
treat
you are!"
The man studied her slender blue hand for a moment. He wasn't thirsty anymore. Now, he was just tired.
He took the hand, rubbing his thumbs into her palm, and brought it to his face. Grinning with delight, she ran her pointed fingers along his jaw and scalp, gently tugging at tufts of his hair.
"I'll call you Edgar!"
"Edgar?"
"Mmhmm," she nodded, smiling gleefully, "he was here before you."
"But he's not here anymore?"
She shook her head, still grinning. "No. But that's okay, because now
you're
here!"
The man quietly scanned the cavern. The glow of the sun shafts washed the damp walls with gradients of blues, grays, and greens. Even here, he heard the crashing of the waves, but not loud and rushing like on the beach, but a quiet hum, like a prayer in an empty cathedral.
The nixie forced his head towards hers. She knelt down, face to face with him. Her bright irises bloomed, churning outward in rainbow swirls. He stared into them, and he couldn't look away, even when he felt a rush of vertigo, like currents of seafoam rushing into his head.
It felt like blacking out: the tingling numbness and tunnel vision before collapsing. He -- his body -- knew what that felt like, but he had no memories to attach to the experience.
He heard her voice when she spoke. It was a happy giggle. To him it seemed muffled but deafening, ringing through his head.
