Where the hills bank into the sprawling puddle, and the pines stand, sentinels, a fisherman sits with a rope out. Black hair strung behind, just as bound, skin with topography as mother nature has in her furls. In the stillness, he is still, but in the submission, he does. A ripple on the edge of a vast pond. Before him, a ripple breaks the surface of this vast pond. He gives the rope a tug.
Under, where the hills sit as substrate, and the pines glance like algae, a boy falls down. Waters and waters hold him, and push him further, their thumbs on his temples and his head bowed. Everything about him is squeezed - eyes shut, legs like logs, arms adjunct. He is still, as Fisherman told him to be, as fisherman is above. The waters squeeze him too. They feel pleasant in comparison to the tightening around his ankle. The tightening in his chest as it becomes harder and harder to breath.
The line is harder to shake underwater, but the fisherman has hands hardened in a land of no change,and trained by a barren sea. He recognizes the distress as the cord is its conduit. A tug at the boy's leg pulls him away from dangling, clawing for air. Liquid rushes past him, and the pressure forces my body into an aerodynamic form. Something like air slaps his face, and he releases his tension. Darkness lingers until my lungs re-inflate, and Death crawls from beneath his eyelids. The light kisses him with more warmth than ever before, even as the inked head of the fisherman eclipses its source. "You stay down this time," he says. "You stay down." He nods, and the boy mimics it, his chin diving into the water agitated by treading legs. The fishermans narrowed pupils betray no recognition and maintain their glaze as they look at an indistinguishable point in the distance.
Fisherman says legend says the big fish coming back only when Thunderbird leaves. Newcomers blasted Thunderbird, and now it's just a matter of time before Big Fish returns.
Fisherman says the boy has to get away from the newcomers. Fisherman says he has to run. Boy tells him that he can't run on water, but Fisherman says Big Fish will help. Fisherman says a lot of things. The kid has trouble remembering most of them, but the thing he was told to never forget was that Big Fish is coming, and Big Fish is going to take him west.
Fisherman says people say the west is like a fantasy. A home for dreams, and the product of brilliance. All the boy sees when he looks that direction, is an endless horizon, and an intersection of two shades of blue.
Ribbons of rope slink into the water as Fisherman lazily lets it run through his hands. He says no goodbyes or good wishes as the boy lets himself sink through the skin of the ocean. After that, the waters scream in his ears so the boy can't hear anything other than the most gigantic noises. Bubbles periodically climb out the corner of his mouth, as he flaps his arms against the waters to orient himself. Facing down, he starts the slow crawl to the sea floor. He crawls until he can't see. He crawls until he can't breathe. He crawls until the rope stops and wont let him crawl no more.
The one thing he thinks about as he hangs there, is his breath, and how it's fleeting. How he wants to go up.
But Fisherman said to stay. Stay down.
His breaths echo inside of him, and then they die. A darkness, darker than even a night without stars, floods over him. Something passes by the entire length of his inverted body, he can hear it, and it compels him to scream out absence into the world. Then, he hears nothing.
So, yeah, this is a bit of a rewrite I did. Maybe more to come??
