SciFi and Fantasy Stories: Sea Far and Deep

            “Am I merely a toy to You, and nothing else?” cried the man to the sky.  “Does it give You pleasure to see all my sorrows before they strike?  How I fail, and try again, and fail, and try again, and succeed just a little, just enough to be heartened, before failing again and again and again until You finally end this pitiful charade and kill me?”  He thumped his chest and threw his arms wildly back, raging hoarsely into the biting wind.  “Why do You give me dignity only to take it away?”

            His words tumbled on sharp gusts back through his hair as he stood defiantly with arms stretched out towards the gray clouds.  Tears threatened to form as the cold air lashed his eyes, but he kept them open, flashing them at the sky, burning up the horizon with his gaze.  The wind smelled strongly of settled rock, ancient wood, and tangy sea salt from the frigid Aersadam Ocean.

            No answer sounded from the land, only the whistling air through the branches and the distant rumble of frothy waves.  Though the mountain raised him almost to the clouds, and the forests rolled out below him like a prickly green rug even to the coast, he felt powerless.  Even the mighty sun hid behind the dreary grayness of the cloud wall.

            The cool swishing gusts abated softly and drew their ethereal words to other lands.  The silence was beautiful, for a heart that could accept beauty.

            “Nothing?” cried the man angrily.  “Have You nothing to say?”  He grasped the emerald medallion that hung about his neck and swung it off.  “Then I will listen no more!”  He drew back his powerful arm and flung the medallion as far from the mountain as he could.

            The man watched as it disappeared into the thick forest below.  Then he sat on a flat rock, buried his head in his hands, and wept.

            Caught on a high branch of the forest, the medallion began to glow.

            Through the vast blue-green murk of the Aersadam Ocean plowed a mighty hunter, bubbles streaming off the tips of his horns, neck spikes, and long muscled tail.  The dragon’s vermilion wings were folded tightly on his back, perfectly aerodynamic, as he sought his quarry.  With a rumbling plaintive groan the whale began to dive, its massive gray bulk fading gracefully into the deep.  Seeing this, the dragon lashed his tail solidly back and forth, propelling him faster down through the water.  His eyes closed because of the increasing pressure in the dark ocean depths, but he could hear the whale’s heart beating frantically ahead of him, he could feel the blood racing through its veins.  His fangs ached to plunge into its meaty flank.  Oh, he was so hungry…

            A small yellow ball appeared at a distance from him, floating perfectly still in the water and not moving with the shifting currents.  Sharp golden rays leapt suddenly from it and pierced the murky darkness with painfully clear light, scattering countless bizarre creatures of the deep who were undoubtedly embarrassed and indignant at being so rudely exposed.  The light pierced even the dragon’s thick eyelids, blinding him and causing his head to throb.  Yet it was something more than this light, golden and white, that terrified him; there was a Presence.  Ancient, awful, wise, and……holy even, yes, holy.  Dark red wings unfolded and painfully stretched as they caught the water, halting his great bulk.

            Greetings, Dragonking, and be not afraid…  The voice was strong, smooth, and layered like a perfect chord of music.  It slid effortlessly into the dragon’s mind, commanding his whole attention.

            The dragon’s yellow eyes opened.  Shimmering beams filled the sea around him, though no longer was he blinded.  He felt the Presence, but saw nothing within the light.

            Here I am, he whispered, and his heart leapt with a sudden fearful joy the likes of which he had not felt in a very long time.

            As the voice continued to speak, the dragon responded to its instructions with conviction.  The task was strange, to put it lightly…menial, almost; he would have been insulted if anyone else had asked it of him.  But he, the fearsome Dragonking, cynical lord of mountain, sea, and sky, was well aware of beings more glorious than himself.  One does not question the All-Powerful.  A circular wave of water erupted as he broke the ocean surface and took wing, flying east…east towards the coast.

            By the time he noticed it, the low whump whump in the air was already quite loud.  The man rubbed his nose as he looked up.  A mighty pine obscured his view of the western horizon and the Aersadam.  He moved to see around it and raised a hand to block the late afternoon sun, which peaked from behind the silver clouds and shot glittery rays of pearl down to the waters.  His heart skipped a beat.  A curse died in his throat, and he whirled madly, scrambling over rocks to reach the steep “path” which had led him to the mountain summit.  Dashing, leaping, skipping into the thin alpine tree line, he tripped as a rotted log knocked his ankle out from under him and sent him tumbling.  He rolled under a rocky outcropping as the dragon’s huge shadow passed overhead and landed with deep wing-beats on the summit where he just had been.

            “Mortal!” growled the Dragonking, his voice shaking the man’s heart.  “Come!  You question the Omnipotent, you get me as your answer!”

            The man quivered in his hiding place.  He reached instinctively for his sword, but felt nothing at his side.  Most of the dragon was hidden from sight, but a glint near the massive claw told him that he had forgotten his weapon resting against a boulder in his panic.  He swore violently.

            A crackling ball of fire shot from the mountaintop and incinerated a tree not ten feet away.  “Profane words from a profane mind,” thundered the dragon’s voice, “and a mind is poisoned by a rotten soul.  I know where you hide, Man, and I know your quarrel with All-Power.  Do not make me scrape your soft carcass out from under that rock.  If you’re thinking of testing me, think of how you eat oysters instead.  The falling sun cuts our time short.”

            Like reeling wild sea fish into a boat, the man collected his nerves.  He glanced at the tree being licked clean by ravenous tongues of flame and decided that to hide longer was folly.  There were a few short grunts almost like laughter from the dragon as he crawled out and stood up uneasily.  He had nothing to say.

            The scarlet dragon eyed him contemptuously.  “What is your quarrel, Man?”

            “I-I thought you knew my quarrel.”

            “I was told it, and it sounded so pathetic I figured it was best to hear it myself.  And stop flitting your eyes around, they may be small but I can still see them, and it makes it look as if you’re not hanging on to my every word.”  The Dragonking extended his long neck forward so he could see the human better.  He crouched on all four legs, his great red bulk covering the entire summit, his leathery wings stretching out and in just over the tops of the nearest trees.  Every so often he would casually swing his spiked tail around to show off its weight and muscle.

            The man gazed for a few seconds into those blinking honey-colored eyes.  The gaze sharpened, his jaw hardened, and his shoulders shifted back.  His voice was bitter.  “What good is an almighty King of Heaven if He can’t even take care of His subjects?  Eh?  Why this pain, this constant hurting?  Why are our souls pummeled ruthlessly day in and day out, all the years of our struggling, pathetic lives?  Either He is irresponsible, or evil, or not truly All-Powerful.  If He’s not All-Powerful, I’d sure as hell like to know who is!  If He’s evil, then I’ll curse His name until He kills me, or kill myself before He can torture me any more.  And if He’s merely some irresponsible, immature, god-child playing with us His toys, then I’ll have no – ”

            An angry grunt sounded, and the dragon lurched forward a step, pinning the man to the earth with a claw.  His breath was uncomfortably hot, and smelled vaguely of salty brine.

            “Perhaps I should have introduced myself, little Man.  I am the appointed king of dragons, of all that flies in the air, that skims the surface of the seas, and of every miserable little creature that comes within my striking range.  I have more raw power than any other miserable sack of flesh and bones in this world, and even I do not profane the Power that is greater.  Your life is an interminable annoyance for me, and if not for the fact that I was sent by He Whom you curse, there would be nothing left of you for the flies to buzz over.  Do not curse what you do not know.”

            The man stopped struggling against the black talons, caught his breath, and closed his eyes.  He opened them, closed them again, and breathed deeply again.  “So He exists?  The King of the gods?  He sent you?”

            “Is mankind both dumb and deaf?”

            The claw tightened around the man’s body, grasping him firmly but causing no pain, and raised him up into the air.  The dragon ignored the human’s indignant shouts and threats as he backed gracefully onto the mountain summit, just as another cold wind whistled through the needles of the alpine trees.

            “Your questions are larger than you think, fool mortal, and the answers must be experienced, seen, not told.”

            The shining amber sun was flirting with the horizon’s waves, and the far eastern sky was already dyed in paints of muted indigo.  The evening’s first star was now visible, and it seemed to sparkle a little brighter as the Dragonking launched himself heavily from the mountaintop and beat his wings mightily to stay aloft.  Then the rushing wind caught them, and suddenly he was a thing of beauty, a flying creature gracefully climbing to his favorite clouds above, a cynical lord forced to smile at how perfectly suited he was to his realm.

            “Have you ever seen the Halar Beleen?” he shouted exultingly.  “Have you ever walked the star-crusted shores of the Ocean of Memory, or talked philosophy with the Fishers of Souls in their boats made from boards of pure virtue?”  He could not hear if the man replied, because he was picking up speed now and the wind was roaring about his ears.  “You will, mortal, you will!”

            A disgrace of the highest magnitude, he added mentally, but ‘tis not my place to question this kind of invitation…

            Sparks of light flitted by in glinting hues of gold, red, violet, indigo, and others.  The man peeked under his protectively-raised arm.  Fading away below them was the vast patchwork of green woods and sunken valleys that ended at the rock-strewn coast.  Lightning flashed before them, its rumble of thunder washing over their whole bodies, pumping their souls with both reverence and exhilaration.  The man closed his eyes as the wind speed sharpened and strengthened.  His thoughts roared and tumbled over themselves in a fight for supremacy, until they all began to meld together.  Death!  Answers!  Life!  Falling!  Flying!  Anger!  Holiness!  Unworthiness!  …Hope!

            “The elves once told me of an old human proverb: ‘Love conquers all.’  Ha!  By my horns, that is false.  So arrogant, for thinking their own love to be strong.  So foolish, for presuming that Love has the need to conquer anything.  It is not so petty.  Rescue, perhaps, but not conquer, for conquest rarely brings new light to the conquered.  Are you worth seeing in the light, Man?  Are you worth loving?”

            While the deep-throated voice still grated with sarcasm and distaste, much of the sharpness had dropped out of it, almost as if the dragon was focused on something else now, and referred to him only in the periphery of it.  A cool breeze slid gently over his skin and made him all the more aware of the heat of the dragon’s heaving chest.  There was a musical silence about them, and it appeared to be dark.  The man groaned and rolled his neck.  It felt stiff.  Cautiously he opened his eyes.

            It was the movement that drew his attention first, the pearl-crested black waves that rolled towards him and crashed, sending speckled strands up to lace over the silver dusty ground.  The ground!  His knees buckled as his heart leapt, and somehow that combination managed to keep him suspended where he was.  For surely he was suspended, he must be!  There was nothing beneath him, only blackness.  And specks of light and dust, seemingly very far away.  It dawned on him slowly…stars, those were stars below him, and red planets, and blue-green-gold galaxies all floating, standing, as if in the middle of an ancient and slow dance.  The man stood on a nearly transparent path running parallel to the “ocean,” and whose ghostly cobblestones held an iridescent glitter both impish and regal.  The sky, the horizon, the ground...the infinite starry abyss threatened to draw his mind and gaze out permanently into the far unknown.  He pulled his eyes away and glanced worriedly down at the path again.

            The dragon snorted.  “It will hold fast for far longer than the ground you are used to standing on.”

            “Where are we?  Where have you taken me?”  The man shuddered as he looked all about him.  The darkly transparent, but still glittering, sea stretched out infinitely on one side, while before him was a long beach of stardust and jewels, which on closer inspection seemed to have tiny planets revolving around them.  There were boats on the sea, sailing easily here and there as distant shimmering figures cast out nets and fishing lines.  A murmur of various sounds wafted from the waves themselves, sometimes music, sometimes voices, as if the thoughts of every creature who ever lived was churning about in a vast mixture of ocean currents.

            “Hemtiliant, the shore of the Halar Beleen, the Ocean of Memory.  I brought us close enough to catch a line, and the Fishers drew us up.  It has been a long time since last I was here.”

            The vastness and awe of the dreamscape billowed like a cloud.  The Dragonking closed his eyes and inhaled the soft musical wind that flew in over the star-strewn ocean.  He sat on his hind legs and stretched his wings languidly out, to flare in the breeze.

            “How will this answer my questions?” demanded the man, looking away from the star waters.  “What is this, really?”

            “Look into the surf, Man,” replied the Dragonking, softly and without opening his eyes.

            The man returned his eyes to the glassy sable waves.  Reflected on the glinting surface before him was his reflection.  At first nothing seemed odd about this.  He was about to turn away, when he suddenly saw that that reflection’s neck was thicker than it should be.  The man looked closer.  Yes, its neck was thick and awkward, with little lumps and rough edges on it.  His heart began to beat faster.  The shoulders also were rough, and the arms stocky, and the face lacked detail.  Below the knees, the legs melded together in a large block of…of…it was hard to tell in the shifting tide of black starglass, but it looked like stone.  Indeed the whole skin of the reflection was dirtily gray, stiff, and lifeless.

            Horrified, the man tried to stumble back, but fell on flat instead.  His legs were in a block of dead stone!  They themselves were stone, as were his hips, his torso, his arms, even his head.  All was dirty and worn, with jagged chinks where tiny insects burrowed little holes.  He could move his body only awkwardly, painfully.

            “What is this?” he cried in agony, struggling to get up.  “What new torture have you brought on me?”

            “New?” replied the dragon.  He gazed down on the weeping, angry human.  There was a glint of pity in the corner of his eye.  “No, Man, this is no new torture!  This is what you have felt your whole life.  This is why it is so hard for you to do what you need to do, what is right.  We are on the edge of the spirit world now, and what you see in the Ocean of Memory, what you are now, is just your soul.”  A deep hot sigh escaped his red snout as he beheld his own body, now covered in long spikes and sharp horns.  “Stop thrashing about, and you will be lifted upright again.  You are privileged beyond all other Men to be here, and unless you learn that it is all wasted.”

            Wearied, the man ceased his struggle and let his body fall limp.  Tears that had hid under his eyelids, afraid to come out, now scampered down his rough stony cheek, leaving trails of flesh-color behind.  Gradually, the steadily blowing breeze lifted him up until he was standing once more on the transparent path of stardust and gemstone.

            A few small lights appeared over the Ocean of Memory, moving swiftly towards them.

            “The rock of one’s soul is one of the hardest and most brittle substances known to exist,” continued the Dragonking.  “It is dangerous, the moreso because we usually cannot see it until it has settled, and become truly unbreakable.  That is why you are so fortunate, little Man, for if one knows the hardness and brittleness of one’s soul, it can be softened.”

            “I thought we all wanted unbreakable souls,” said the man heavily.  “Strength, courage, resilience to face the trials of life.  Is that not good?”

            “Do you think you are in any position to face danger right now?”

            The bright spots of light continued to grow larger.

            “I can barely move, and only with pain.   My sight is diminished and clouded.  No…this is torture, this is hell!”

            Not Hell... thought the Dragonking wryly.

            “Is this what you brought me here for, dragon?  To show me a Tyrant’s torture chamber?  You promised me answers, dragon, answers!  Where are they?  Where is this Almighty One, this noble King of Heaven, this omnipotent god-child playing with His toys?  I’ll have no more of your lies!  Wait…what is that?  Coming toward us over the Ocean, what is it?  I can barely see, my eyesight is getting worse…”  He pointed awkwardly at the coming lights, burning their trails through the space.

            “Those are omnipotent Love,” said the Dragonking, “thrown by Him.  Only they can sheer off your jagged edges, only they can burn the dirt from your soul.  Only they can carve you out properly.”

            “No…” whispered the man, wide-eyed.  He wanted to run away, to curse the dragon, to cry.  But he stayed standing where he was, an unfinished, living statue.

            “These are what you felt when your heart was broken by the hunter’s daughter, and your heart grew wiser.  These are what you felt when the girl you befriended long ago was violated by a cowardly brigand who managed to escape your vengeance.  They are what struck you when your wife succumbed to fever, and you struggled through long nights devoid of companionship to learn the skills that would make you the leader your tribe needed.  They struck you also when you saw the starving children of another lost tribe, softening your heart, and again when your tribe rejected your wishes to grant aid, to their ruin.  Your soul would be much smoother now if you did not flinch every time you saw Love coming.”

            The man’s chest heaved as he tried to control the tears that streaked down his face.  He did not notice his once-stony cheeks beginning to soften, to warm feverishly.  The flying, burning lights were fixed in his eyes, now glinting emerald.  Out on the Ocean of Memory, the Fishers looked up from the starwaters and raised shimmering hands to him.  He could not tell if they waved at, cursed, or saluted him.

            “I am not worthy of love,” he groaned.

            “No Man is worthy of Love, mortal,” replied the Dragonking contemptuously.  Then he paused and again regarded the thorns sticking painfully from his own hide.  Nor dragon.  “But that is irrelevant.  You have done nothing to earn this Love, so you can do nothing to lose it.  Only one with All-Power has the right or will to love the unworthy, and seeing as He does, that is all that matters.  You see, there would be no Love if Omnipotence Itself did not embody it purely.  And Omnipotent Love sees always to your soul.”

            The green comets were many now, and they leapt closer, oddly seeming like puppies running happily to their master.  All about them, the Man and the Dragonking, the blackness of space began to lighten, turning vaguely pink, gold, and purple.

            “Dawn is coming,” said the dragon, “when the angels celebrate the closing of the Twilight Gates by staining the sky with wines.  Brace yourself, Man, for when the green fires strike us, we shall be sent back to the mortal world.  Fear not, though, for it will loosen your joints and clear your vision.”

            “Will it hurt, dragon?”

            “Only if you flinch.”