the chambers of the sea

[blazingcaepa]

Title: the chambers of the sea
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Word Count: if I could figure out how to do that on this computer, I would (bloody Türkçe)
Notes: Sam, Daniel, the ocean, and forgetting.

 

the chambers of the sea

*

It is a clear night. The moon hangs in the sky, a pendant on an extravagent necklace of pearls, of stars, reflected in the unbroken sea.

They sit in the sand. Wait.

Gulls circle above them in the night, the stars winking in and out between their wings.

*

They are from a place. They were from a place. They were from a place that has ceased to exist, in time and memory. Now they aren't from anywhere at all.

Olive trees grow along the hills, a day or more walk from the sea. It's dangerous to leave the seaside, but the olives are worth it. Olive trees are efficient, he says. The wood burns hot, the fruit is easily preserved, the oil has many applications, and the remnants from the pressing process are used to fertilize the trees.

They burn the wood in their firepit on the shore, under the glimmering sky. The smoke trails upward, disperses, disappears.

He picks up a fallen twig from the ground, stares at the wilted leaves. "A pacific sign," he says.

"What?"

"Someone said something. Once. I can't remember."

--

They swim in the moonlight, bodies glinting in the moonlight. They splash around the rocks, disturbing fish, drifting in the saline. It feels safe, calm, and she imagines that she feels a heartbeat under the waves. It's been so long since she's been loved.

It's not always safe. One night, when the stars were hidden under leaden clouds, they swam too far, deceived by the darkness hanging over the water like a fog, and the tide carried them, gasping, to the far end of the bay. They strove against the waves, stroking parallel to their memory of the shoreline, before they found the rocks at the mouth. She scrabbled for purchase, pulled herself out of the sea's grip, pulled him up after her. Her grip was slippery with oozing welts; her hands, numbed by the current and her fear, hadn't felt the razor edges of the barnacles.

He lifts her palm to his mouth, sucks the blood away. She dangles it in the water, hisses at the sting of salt against the open wounds.

She'd forgotten the strength of the tide.

She says, "When you fight the tide, you're really fighting the moon."

She thinks, I can't remember why.

-

They sleep curled in the sand, both abrasive and soothing, still warm from the baking heat of day, wrapped around each other. To the birds, they must look yin-yang, entwined, neverending. Eternal.

Olive trees, he tells her, are almost immortal.

Almost.

They sleep not long after the sun goes down and wake not long before it rises, blinking in the predawn light. His hair is tousled with sleep, eyes heavy-lidded. He looks about eight years old. She presses her lips to his forehead before slipping down to the water. She drifts in the shallows, watches the sun creep above the horizon where endless water meets endless sky.

They sleep again at midday, a catnap in the damp, shady darkness beneath a rock outcropping, concealed from the punishing sun. After, they race down to the shore, gritting their teeth against the excrutiating contrast of freezing water and sun.

"Persuing pleasure through gritted teeth," he says.

"What?"

"Nothing."

-

Early one morning, a few hours before dawn, he shakes her awake. "You've got to see this."

She scrambles to her feet, slipping a little on the sand, still clumsy from sleep. He leads her across the dunes, far from their beach. It's a long way; she tries to count her steps, loses track. He turns, angeling toward the sea, and she follows him down the beach, rubbing her eyes. He stops. "Look."

It takes her breath away. The moon blazes a trail across the sea, falling brilliantly across the shore. Across the hundred of shining bodies in great glistening swaths, fins like knives in the night. Still, and dead.

"They threw themselves against the tide," he says, his voice as flat and dead as the carnage on the sand.

She wonders if they fought the moon, too. Wonders if they won or lost.

She touches his arm. "Come on," she says, "let's go."

Later, curled like cats in the sand, she says, "How did you know they were there?"

He says, "I don't know."

-

She slips below the water at dawn, watches the sky streaking pink and gold from beneath the cool, aquatic distortion. Fish flick past, darts of sliver in the early morning light. Her fingers dig deep into the sand, cold and heavy. Something waves in and out of her vision; she thinks it's seaweed before she realizes it's her hair, drifting in the currents.

Her lungs ache, and she releases, propells to the surface. The sunlight hurts her eyes, and the lacerations on her palms sting faintly.

She nearly drowned once. It was a long time ago.

(How long? She can't remember.)

--

"I'm glad you're here," she tells him, gripping his hand. Far across the ocean, the sun is slipping gently below the waterline.

"Me, too," he says, and squeezes her hands.

Above them, the first stars begin to appear.

Comments

[georginasand]

Darlin',your prose reads like poetry and it's wonderful. I don't know the characters or their history, but it never seems to matter.

LOVE
Georgie

P.S. How's the Star Trek coming?

[merrycaepa]

Thanks, dear! (Did Gwen get you on the "darlin'" bandwagon?)

Star Trek has stalled until I get a copy of the DVD. I'm combing the backalley vendors but no dice so far...

[georginasand]

No, actually. I got it from D.W. in the Sparrow. So now my conscious calls me darlin' and I picked it up from him (her?, it?).


Good Luck with the piracy. There is a graph circulating on the internet claiming the decrease in piracy caused global warming, so at least you are helping with that.