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║grovel on gravel, eat the dirt ━━━ (CHAPTER THIRTEEN)
ANEMONE CORALIS WANTED POWER.
She was five and she didn't factor in having to bear consequences with great power. On a stormy night, her mother recited to her the legendary story of the Wizard King and suddenly, she wanted power to protect people. To protect the people she held close to her heart. To guide them like a shooting star and fill their paths with blinding light.
She didn't want power to hurt people. To ruin crops as soon as a single tear rolls down her cheek and to make farmers lose their jobs. She didn't want power to hurt. To destroy saints. To banish shooting stars from their homes and knock them down unto earth burying them six feet under as if they were mortal rotting corpses not divine babies of the sun. She was six when she learned power was too much and she was too fragile.
In her dreams, she asked the gods why and they told her it was a package deal. You are the ocean, now. Boundless and full of potential. Home to many living things and carrying the burden of such living things. They sit on your shoulders like an invisible weight and you cannot shake them off until you have fulfilled your duty. You have become one with Amphitrite and you will carry her sins too. Light as a feather you are but you must be unbreakable; feathers are too light to break after all. One cannot conquer the ocean so no one can conquer you. That is how powerful you are.
And yet no one warned her of pollution. No one warned her that her mother will come dumping rich black oil into her mouth, allowing the sticky tar black liquid to flow down her throat and clog her insides. No one warned her that bad people will feed her plastic disguised as praises for her being more mature for her age, for being older than she was. No one warned her how much suffering an ocean tolerates because of mankind.
You see, no matter how ginormous the ocean stretches across the earth and no matter how deep it is, it is susceptible to mankind's evils and it fears all which has pained it.
Anemone chided her inner thoughts, reminding herself over and over again to not look away from her mother's gaze. Rhea's irises are green like jade gemstones, green like monstera leaves, green like the triangular edges of succulents. They are the warm tones of green and do not hide flecks of sharp grey in them. Grey like gunpowder ready to fire into her soul, grey like cinders in the burning pile, grey like the colour of dullness and loss. At least it's what she constantly tells herself.
And now, as her mother wishes her to be careful whilst saving Sister Lily from the bandits, Anemone again convinces herself to look into her mother's warm but flat eau de nil eyes. It pairs perfectly, perhaps all too well, with her cryptic smile on paper thin lips. An odd sight, not an uncommon one, nonetheless it never failed to unnerve her each time.
