Oblivion

Beginning to End

With Cybeles's near-death experience with the sea, she ought to be afraid to go near the water again, but eagerness replaced fear. She was ready to hit the shore and let her toes dip in the waves to see the man that pulled her out of certain death.

Her dreams last night consisted of the pale merman with hair and eyes that mirrored each other with their shade of silver. The man's tail was emerald green with black flecks shimmering in the sun. His torso was full of battle scars ranging from long and thin to short and thick.

Cybele wasn't shocked that a merman saved her from the depths of the Oblivion.

Nothing else would have been able to save her from the pitch-black waters.

Merpeople were known and believed to be the only creatures that thrived in the Black Sea. But, unfortunately, the water is too salty for fish or any sort of edible substance.

No one had traveled on the choppy, ashy waters since the prison crumbled upon the prisoners and guards.

Villagers chopped up the incident as fate to stay away from the water and the curses that lay beneath.

Cybele was fascinated with the ruins of the building, with its fallen grey stones covered in ivy and small purple flowers that were nowhere else on the isle.

The black-pebbled shore was littered with driftwood without a grain of sand. Everything was magical but deadly.

The island warned her of getting too close with the constant fog surrounding the small island, but she didn't listen. So instead, she accidentally slipped off the cliff with her camera in tow yesterday morning.

She wanted to get pictures of the prison at dawn with the sunrise on the horizon with the reflecting pink and yellow rays across the surface of the rippling water.

Cybele felt like she had been drowning daily in the same practices for a long time. She thought the sea would finally finish her off once her lungs filled with horrid water, but fate had other plans.

Cybele ran to the grey-sanded beach where the merman had dragged her onto yesterday but didn't spot anything out of the water. So instead, she walked and walked without taking her eyes off the horizon.

Her foot hit something that almost caused her to fly face forwards in the sand, but she caught herself on a piece of wood from an old, washed-up ship. She looked down to see a clear glass bottle with some paper inside.

Cybele quickly grabbed it up and opened the cork. Then, she tilted the bottle to let the paper drop into her icy palm.

She opened it up with shaky hands.

You never told me your proper name, sweets.

She knew it was from her merman savior, Lethe.

For the next eight weeks, Lethe and Cybele wrote letters back and forth. Sometimes multiple times a day. They were sealing the feelings they both developed over time in a cage of their making.

With each word written, the more she felt for the merman. A feeling that was foreign to her since all of her loved ones had left this world.

Cybele,

Oblivion was rather dull today. The deep blue of the flaming river turned red, letting us know another poor soul was lost to the forbidden sea. At least Verena knows not to enter.

Lethe,

The Oblivion doesn't sound dull at all but rather creepy. As much as I would like to spend a day in your shoes, I mean fin, life in the underworld of the sea doesn't sound too enticing.