Gifts Given By the Ocean can also be taken back.
After the death of the Village Head, estranged cousins Mandeeq and Shermake reunite at their Grandfather's funeral where their fathers fight over who would be the Heir to the village. With tensions ru...
"Even though this life, this love, is brief, I've got some people who carry me." - D. K.
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Amana could get used to many things about human beings, but she could never quite get over how quickly they lived, and how quickly they died.
How their time on this earth could ever be enough for them, she'd never know.
In all her hundreds of years of living, she still felt that she had so much to do, so much to see. A couple decades could never be enough for her, not even ten, she felt. Her world —this ocean — had been her home for almost her entire life. Of course, she had managed to see and experience the land above briefly, but what about the skies? The mountains, and who knows what else? She often feared that she would never explore everything she dreamed of, and the idea of laying to rest for good before she could do everything she meant to was the scariest thought she felt she could have.
She thought to herself often at night, if it were to be the last time she closed her eyes, her life would have ended far too soon. But if mermaids, with all their years, could feel so reluctant and distasteful about dying, what did that mean for the people on the surface?
How could they stand it, the humans? Aren't they jaded? Aren't they bitter? How couldn't they be? Their short life above water could be so dangerous and so full of hardship. It must be torture, to be constricted to a few decades of a difficult life and then meeting a untimely end.
No matter how old they were when they eventually went, Amana always felt it was untimely.
Despite this, however, the humans still made time to dance and sing and rejoice, and that was possibly the most confusing thing of all. What did they have to be happy about? Whatever it was, Amana at most times found it foolish. She often wondered if, and how they could stand to fight amongst themselves, even kill, over concepts like money, or pride, and not consider it the highest treason. Not only against others, against themselves.
You only have so long to live, Amana would think. How could you not hold each other for dear life?
And still, she was ridiculously jealous. Even after all these years of love, life, and loss, she still wanted to know what made them sing and dance as if they weren't singing and dancing on hopelessly borrowed time.
Amana remembered a time she came across a family of five on the beach. She hid carefully within the waves, only her eyes above the water as this was before the treaty had been formed. The three kids were running around, the sand weighing down their precious little feet as their giggles filled the air. The parents were collecting stuff on the beach, she wasn't exactly sure what but they had baskets strapped to their backs and would pick stuff off the sand and toss it inside. She wanted to go out there and ask them, maybe even join in on this activity they seemed so consumed by.
Amana heard a splash and suddenly, a scream pierced the air. The parents dropped the baskets, and ran in the direction of their kids, a wild look within their eyes. Amana desperately swam parallel to them and she noticed there were two kids standing by the shore as they urgently pointed at the water.
