The night I met the sea

About a 3 minute read

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#fantasy #writing-prompt

Prompt

It’s been twenty years since you first started manning the lighthouse. You barely notice the sounds and smells of the ocean now. That’s why you noticed immediately that the gulls had fallen silent. Your old mentor was right. He was right, all along.


Response

It’s been so long that I’ve been here, I don’t even hear the sounds of the ocean waves crashing against the rocky shore. I don’t smell the salty air with which the sea brings. It is a part of me now. It would be strange if the sounds and smells that have been in my life the last twenty years, suddenly vanished.

That is why…one evening, I was suddenly struck with a strange tingling inside my heart. The gulls, which should be noisily heading back to their nests by now, had all but gone silent. The only sound was the crashing of the waves, which brought with them a strange, new sensation.

There I sat at my dinner table, contemplating what I was hearing; what I was feeling. There was a presence, something that I had never felt before. I could feel an energy, calling to me from just outside the lighthouse walls. My body slowly started to stand on its own, my mouth agape, as I struggled to understand it.

It was then that my mentor’s words flashed through my mind. He had spoken of a night, late in his tenure as lighthouse keeper, that no one would believe. The situation he had described seemed unbelievable at the time. But now…now it was piecing together. This feeling. This was what he was trying to tell me.

My feet slowly scraped across the old wooden floor towards the door. My heart started pounding hard. My breathing was becoming heavier the closer I got. My hand grasped the cool metal of the handle, and with a slow turn, the door swung open.

I don’t even remember stepping through the door. My entire consciousness was focused on perceiving what my eyes were seeing…

It was as if the ocean had lifted into the air; hovering. A massive, dark mass was floating there before me. I couldn’t even comprehend the size, as my eyes were drawn into the strong, yellow eyes that pierced through my soul. Ripples of red shot through the mass, which I now recognized as a creature.

The words barely escaped my mouth, at no louder than a whisper.

“…Kyogre”.