Mermaid.

chương 2

Seul

Unlike others who use the stale word bed for a bed, Seul calls him a dream hatcher because of exactly what it is – where his wild, quietly-nurtured, and hidden thoughts during the days finally make their way into the world, in the form of dreams. He’s creative, he’s poetic, he’s unwavering to the boredom of life, and he shall live it up even in the most private and vulnerable doing of every being – the act of sleep.

Today Seul finds out that the edge of his dream hatcher is sharp and ragged, meaning it’s about time to get a new one. It’s become a routine for Seul to change the bed now and then. He had it coming when he insisted on using a huge clam shell to rest his head, but he doesn’t regret it. It gives him a sense of uniqueness, of daring, of doing what others never think of for the sake of trying. It also gives him reasons to get up and move, especially on the days when all he wants is to snuggle in his room, wishing for his blaring mind to shut up.
With the thought vividly burning in his head, Seul gathers motivation and rolls out of his shell – literally and figuratively. He sighs, watching the bubbles churning around him, and looks up above as a force of habit. The sunlight is still there, too close for him to feel through the water, and yet always too far away to let his skin have a real taste.

The remorse doesn’t last long, nonetheless, as Seul heads to the shallow part of the sea, where the giant clams live. These creatures depend on a huge deal of sunlight to thrive, so he’s going to where he can be closer to the feeling he’s dire to have. The turquoise of the ocean is paler from here, mixing with more gold from the direct sunlight.

Seul lands next to several clams, big enough for him to rest his back comfortably. Sometimes he wonders if they feel the pain of being ripped off from their shells and left to die, but he quickly shrugs the pity away. Clams aren’t meant to have concepts of pain, but to provide comfort to the rulers of the sea, namely Seul’s father, and everyone in his family. It’s a waste of their existence if he doesn’t let them serve.

Today, however, his search is startled, not by the sudden pity with which sometimes his feral heart likes to torture itself, but by an unmentioned desire his ferocious brain always jumps at. As Seul is wandering around the seabed, examining the potential shells suited best for his liking, he runs into the shipwreck.

He knows that’s what it’s called, because of the survival lesson passed down through generations of merpeople, that they should avoid getting impaled by the broken wood of a shipwreck. He’s aware of this particular one’s existence, for Seul being Seul, always going head first into what people advise him against. He has never seen it anywhere that close, nonetheless.

At first, Seul thought he was having a hallucination because he never thought of ever seeing it here. The bottom of the shipwreck is much lower than where he is, but its top stands out and is visible from Seul’s spot. He swims there to make sure that his head isn’t messing with him, and is struck with surprise that it’s indeed one of the (rare?) occasions when he’s in the clear. The ship looms over in front of him.

This is weird, because the last time Seul saw it, it was at the rear of the darker sea, and there hadn’t been any wave strong enough to move it. He’s visited it a few times, for very quick searches, only when he urgently needs something to add up to his collection of the Earth’s objects. Even he can’t stand the feeling of being too close to this unorthodox part of the ocean. The dark sea is the rare case where Seul agrees with other merpeople – that it should be buried and forgotten.
There isn’t anything there, to begin with, no potential for exploration and various potentials of death, like several volcanoes on the verge of blasting and a bunch of unnamed sea creatures that resemble factions of a nightmare. Some even claim that a wicked witch lives there, but Seul never buys those words of mouth. As if the existence of such a place weren’t terrifying enough. 
For now, Seul’s glad. The shipwreck’s been a throbbing topic he has to refrain himself from wondering about. It’s the closest thing he ever has to the human world, and a detailed exploration of it is overshadowed by his fear of the darker sea. Now the shipwreck's ripped away from the darker sea and brought to him, by whatever miracle the ocean has in store, the last barrier is washed away.
The desire shines brighter than it ever does, and Seul finds it driving him down, lower, deeper, closer to the towering pile of broken wood, shattered glass, and deranged whatever it is parts that make a human’s ship.