Dancing with Seagulls

Dancing with seagulls was my favorite game,
It captured my idle thoughts and numbed the pain;
Those long lonely evenings when I would be free,
Dancing with seagulls as they danced with me.

I’m entranced by the seagull’s dance. Watching it swirl and loop, dive, flatten and glide, plunge into the depths to emerge empty handed… Watching its dull grey wings push hard against the air, tensing and folding, refolding and tensing again. Watching its feet tuck into its soft stomach, folding away into the down. Watching its orange eyes flash back and forth across the stormy waters of the bay.

Wrapped up in the soft cocoon of my enormous coat, I forget to shiver whilst perched on the end of the old pier. I forget myself, and weave a picture for my tired head, a picture of the pier buzzing with life. I watch the seagull swoop down to the empty hull of a fishing boat, and imagined it snatching a fresh fish from the abundant nets of the rough fishermen, unloading from the early haul. In my head the scales flash bright silver, the net tangle briefly before snapping, and then the gull sweeps away. A fisherman shouts in annoyance and surprise, waving a fist after the gull, which now stands on the edge of the pier, metres from me. I laugh, and my imagined fisherman looks my way, his creased forehead mellowing into a smile.

“Y’alright lass?” he calls, heaving the net aboard.

“Aye, I’m alright,” I call out to the empty waves.

I turn around, leaning my back against the final pillar of the pier, beginning to reconstruct the beach front, building bright cottages, whitewashed, with painted shutters along the shore; green, yellow, red; all soaked through with brine and sea-wind, faded. Troughs of flowers overflowing along window ledges. A tired grey shop front – the boson’s yard – builds itself out of the headland at the end of the pier, towering a little over the cottages, leaning to one side from the constant onslaught of the sea breeze. A flag flaps lackadaisically from the roof.

My thoughts move to people; a sudden crowd populates the seafront, buzzing around the fresh catch, haggling with my first fisherman, fish passing back and forth, pinching the flesh of the neck to check for freshness, shaking hands to end a deal, the clink of coins passing palm to palm. The fresh salt smell of the sea tingles in my nose, the waves pound in my ears, and I can nearly see them walking back and forth.

Unwillingly, my thoughts imagine a girl running across the quay, jumping, twisting through people’s legs, tugging at the trouser of my fisherman for a brief moment, then running again, her green coat blowing out in the breeze like a cape as she flies down the pier, skidding to a halt seconds before the windswept edge of the wooden front, searching for mer-people in the dark green depths.

“Meg!” calls a memory, “Meg, if you fall, I’ll tell y’mam y’ jumped!”

I stand up and I am the girl, looking back at the fishing village, watching the small community swarm back and forth from quay to road, setting up market, working diligently even as the sun’s rays spill from the horizon. I watch the boy, a few years older than me, run away from the crowd and out onto the pier to grapple my reluctant hand into submission, towing me away from the enchanting depths.

The seagull’s grey wings flap at my face as I startle it from its perch, and it flies off again, along the quay, not beside whitewashed walls but the burnt-out skeletons of old memories. I bite my lip against the swell of memories but they break regardless over my mental pier and tears begin to fall from my tired grey eyes.

“’Ere, Meg, come away!” calls a voice, not a memory, but too similar for comfort.

The grey wings swoop and dive over the crashing waves, joining the flock of other gulls, beating against the wind, plunging into the icy waters. I imagine myself with the gull, free of human worry; I think of diving with it into the blue. For a moment I sway on the edge, half wanting to dive in, just to experience the bite for a second, to feel the ice against my skin.

“Meg, y’frighten me sometimes,” Joseph says into my ear, his strong arms wrapping around my chilled frame.

“Sorry,” I whisper, my heart still following the wings as they fly high.

“’Tis ok,” Joseph says, tugging me away from the edge of the pier and my daydreams, “I don’t know what it is y’think ‘bout, but y’ look pure fey when y’ glance out like that. You’re beyond my ken, Megan Jones.”

“Megan Robson,” I correct, taking a hold of his hand in my own. His wedding band presses into my skin comfortingly, and I twist mine idly with my thumb. We set off back along the pier, slipping into the car, doors slamming, seatbelts snapping. I look back at the pier, and my grey-winged gull sits once more on its favourite perch. I smile idly. Joseph kisses my cheek, laughing at the fey look returning to my eye. He starts the car, and the sea disappears behind the winding ribbon of the valley. It fades into the same shade as the grey clouded sky, the same shade as my gull’s grey wings. The quay, the pier, the skeletal houses all disappear, and with them the last remnants of my childhood.

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Written for Kite Flyin's Username Contest.

Word count: 927.

Comment? :)

Ivy, xXGreyWingsXx (c) 2009