Winter mist mari by Skulls and Sheets, story by Nimue

I went down to the sea tonight. I don’t like those public rituals for screaming the names of the dead. Grief is a private thing for me. I like to be alone with the waves and whisper what I have to say.

I often see surf horses in the early morning, there’s a herd of them who usually appear in this cove. I think they feed on something in the water,  or maybe it’s the foaminess of the cresting waves that they’re drawn to. 

Today the mist lay heavily on the sea, rolling in banks like a second ocean riding upon the first. The kind of morning when it seems there might be many different worlds all layered one atop the other and that you might easily slip between them. 

Then the slanting winter light cut through it all, buttery and strange, the yellow against the white. I saw her form then. She is to the mist what surf horses are to the waves, I think. Larger and more imposing than even the storm horses I have seen in previous years, but also more delicate, more ephemeral than the sea beasts I normally encounter.

I whispered the story of my grief to her, and she stayed, hovering in the bay as though inclined to listen to my words. I felt comfort, for the first time in many years. I felt understood. Sometimes there is beauty in the terror, and kindness in the most uncanny things. I have learned not to make assumptions.

With her blessing I go back to sleep in my grave a little longer. No doubt I will wake again, tormented by memory and loss. But I will wake knowing that I am not wholly alone in this world after all.

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