The Edge of Unadulterated Moonlight

Her Shoes

Her shoes, pristine and deep brown to match her delicate cardigan, are soaked through and her feet are throbbing with the cold. Her sudden halt has caused the winter-sodden water around her ankles to stir and settle in the cracks of her fragile skin. Docile waves strike in rounds; pound to her hearts unrelenting schedule. They knock at her structure, break, and hit the softened ground only a few steps behind her. The debris of eroded land filling the cracks in her fractured adolescent skin, smoothing and toughening her like porcelain. Turning to rock, an adult, resilient but motionless. Her breath, hurried and cavernous, aids the temperate winds as they disrupt the water and nip at her beneath her Sunday-best dress.

Though, what froze her was not the breeze, or the sea, or the rapid pace at which she was outgrowing her childhood. It was a fish. She wished not to cause a disturbance in the water on the chance it might dash back into the darkness. Barely beyond the edge of the pure, unadulterated moonlight that fell over the scene, it hovered just below the surface cascaded in shadow that turned its scales an obscene black. She watched the fish; not the horizon, not the moon's redemption of the evening sky, liberated from the mountains. Not her rippling shadow cast by the moonlight, made of fairy dust and untainted silver. Not her boat banked on shore behind her, the metal chain she lead it by reflecting both the water and light as if it were trying to vanish.

He was about the length of her forearm - she decided the ominous fish was a 'he' - and he swam in lazy circles beneath the surface as to not disrupt the gentle waves rolling over him. Twice, she counted, he momentarily disappeared, dove down to the ocean floor, but both times he returned and flitted his tail almost anxiously. He looked lost. She reached out her hand, not to the fish but outward; out toward the horizon, out toward the mountains. Guiding, gesturing, telling him where he needed to be.

And, as her parents now call out, running down the oceanfront toward her, the fish flees. She turns, an isolated tear falling to the icy water still swirling around her now numb feet. The evidence washed away by the waves. Her parents are here, hearts as middle class and blue as the horizon they are running from, the one she now gazes toward. Their faces mimic the weathered and abrasive exterior of the boat. Exhausted, damaged, but well-made and comforting.

As they embrace, she keeps her eyes on the shifting waters, wondering where the fish had gone and if he had made it to the horizon where he needed to be. But before she walked away from the shore she kicked off her water-logged shoes and laid them on the sand. Toes pointed toward the moon so he would know where to find her.