Into the Sea

3

After returning to his cottage, the fisherman sat inspecting the day's catch once more.

Instead of before his fire, the girl lay in his bed, dressed in one of his shirts. He had brushed most of the dirt from her, but some small grains had fallen from her hair, and lay on the pillow beside her. Her face was still pale but had lost the ghoulish tint that had made him mistake her for dead.

I swear... when I pulled her from the sea there was no pulse. No heart beat.

But he must have been mistaken, for now the girl's chest rose and fell in soft rhythm, and when he put his hand before her nose he could feel her warm breath.

She is alive.

He studied the lines of her face. A proud, high nose and cheeks, slender eyebrows arching over long lashed eyes. Her features were fine, but shaped in such a way that they could be mistaken for masculine or feminine. Except her mouth. There was a definite curve to the bow of her lips, that begged for rouge.

Alive, and very beautiful.

The fisherman foolishly blushed at his own thoughts.

The girl could not be much more than twenty years of age. Her pale skin and soft hands covered in rings made the fisherman suspect she came from a wealthy family, or a profession where she did not need to work in the sun.

"I wonder what your name might be?"

The girl did not answer. She did not wake, and the fisherman suspected she would not anything soon. If she ever woke. Spending as long in the sea as she must have... it was a wonder she was alive at all.

The fisherman had not yet eaten. After carefully dribbling a line of water  between the girls lips, he went about preparing his meal. From the rain spigot outside he filled a iron pan with freshwater. Then over the low brick stove in one corner he heated the water to boil, and added ground millet, stirring the mixture into a paste. When the mixture became thick, he seperated it into individual balls of paste, then squashed these balls down with his long wooden ladle, and fried them until both sides were crunchy and the insides cooked.

Finally, he reached up to grab a handful of the small dried fish that hung in countless strings from his ceiling. He alternated with each bite, enjoying the contrast between crunchy salt of the fish and the smooth blandness of the millet cakes.

It was simple fare, but it was filling, and he was too distracted to do more.

While eating, he once again studied his catch, pondering what he would do once she woke up. He would feed her, of course, though he wondered if she would be satisfied with such simple food as millet cakes if she came from a richer house.

The fisherman looked up, at the fish strung rafters, then down, and the pressed dirt floor. Who was he fooling? She most definitely came from a richer house than his.

She would not want to stay long. The fisherman would help her gain back her strength, then send her on her way.

And then she would be gone, and his life would be back to as it was once more.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Over the following days, the fisherman did nothing without the girl in mind.

He cleaned his small home till even the dirt floor shone. He dusted the rafters, and scrubbed the walls, till the white plaster was white once more. He cleaned the tanned hide stretched over the windows, and the cottage grew lighter because of it.

"What do you think? It is not such a bad place, with a little light?"

The girl continued to sleep, chest softly rising and falling in his bed.

His food stock was already plentiful, but lacked diversity. So he went into the forest and sought out mushrooms and berries and roots. He hung his finds from the eaves on the north side of his cottage to dry in the stiff sea breeze.

And finally every morning he went out to fish, despite the wet weather that had settled over the bay. He fished not to sell, but to make sure he had fresh fish, should the girl wake that day. He threw back all but the sweetest fish.

But each night came and the girl had not woken, and so the fisherman ate his catch alone, and then slept in a hammock he slung from the rafters.

Her soft breath was all he could hear besides the sea.

*~*~*~*~*~*

On the third evening, as he ate the sweet white fleshed flounder he had just fried and seasoned with pepper and lemon juice, he sat and watched the girl's chest rise and fall.

"You know, if you are not going to wake, I do not think I can keep you here forever," the fisherman said to the pale face on his pillow. "I would like my bed back, and I do not want to be a bad host, but you do not give back in the way of conversation."

The girl said nothing, eyes still closed, long lashes against her cheeks. Perhaps it was his imagination, but it seemed like the pale cheeks had gained color, like the faintest blush of pink on a rose petal.

The fisherman swallowed. "Though I suppose you make up for it in other ways," he mumbled to himself.

He reached for his chopsticks, to finish the flounder. Then a knock came at the door.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Chapter:934
Total:4363