Unaware of everything save for the dreamy memories flitting briefly through his mind, even that soon began to fade, and though life returned to him, the vignettes of his life did not. Consciousness was still a long ways off, but for now, everything was black to him. When memory did return to him, it was different than when his life had 'flashed before his eyes.' Though he gave no external sign of it, consciousness was beginning to creep over him, like the fingers of dawn.
It started with the sacred remembrance of a mermaid's song. It was an eery sound, but so beautiful, one would go towards it willingly, even if it were death. He did not know how long he drifted, cradled in the bosom of those sonar notes, but it was without beginning and without end. It connected with his soul, touched him in a timeless way. It was the nurturing murmur of his mother's voice when he was still in the womb. It was the lifegiving blood of amniotic fluid. It was the earth that would take him when he died, and return his mortal form to dust. It was the closest he had ever come to hearing god speak to him. It was an alien language, one which made no logical sense to his mind, but it felt to him like the native tongue of his spirit.
His memory warped the sound, gave it more vowels, carried it in undulating patterns which rose and fell, cacooned him and then drifted back. As he listened, his awareness very slowly widened until he could feel sand beneath his fingers, and a sore ache all over his body. There was a sharper throb on his frontal lobe, and a sticky wetness there that was different than the chill damp on the rest of him. And a weight...a painful pressure, so unpleasant after that surreal drifting, as reality returned to him. He could also hear the sounds of birds, of wind rustling palm leaves. Further away, the whisper of waves lapping a shore, and startlingly close, the occasional scratch of microscopic rocks scraping together as something on top of them moved. These sounds were different than the song he heard in his head. He heard these noises with his ears, which forced him to differentiate, and begin to realize that this incredible music was a figment of his imagination, a memory he had never had.
Breaths came stronger through his lungs, raising and lowering his chest. They now made an audible, steady sound. As the sun reached his face, he felt the warmth, but did not stir. The light shone richly on his tanned skin, making it look deeper, and more alive. Before he had resembled a waxy corpse. The nymph had kissed life back into him, but now, the sun reanimated him with a caress. Where his skin was thinner, the light reacted differently. Through his exposed earlobes, it shone red, casting tiny pink reflections on the sand beneath him. It highlighted the pulse which jerked through an artery in his neck. It formed narrow shadows behind each vein on the back of his hand, a valley behind each mountain, as though every inch of his skin was a miniature landscape. His eyelids looked nearly white underneath the already-strong sunlight, and his eyes beneath them showed faintly through like dark, circular shadows.
Then, they began to move. These veiled circles roved from side to side in twitchy patterns, and his dark, thick eyebrows furrowed as if loathe to be woken by the unrelenting light. The mystical sound of that voice had faded away to nothingness, the siren song had left him bereft. When he began to let go of it, he suddenly heard one last note, one resounding chime of that unearthly knell, which ended the memory for good, but stayed with him for a long time, resounding through his soul long after he had forgotten it.
With it, his nostrils flared as he suddenly drew in a breath through his nose instead of his parted lips, and then he coughed. Eyes still shut, body still limp against the ground, a couple of small coughs wracked him, making his torso jerk slightly. He turned his head, grimacing harder, and then slitted his eyes open. There was so much pain in his throat, from all the leftover salt, but the sunlight lancing into his head hurt him too. His head wound throbbed so much, it seemed like an atmospheric pressure which actually pulsated against him from above. His eyesight was blurry at first, offering him only a sense of light, and of cheerful colors of blue and green.
Needing to breathe more than he needed to see, Sterling lifted his head and tried to roll to the side, but did not make it very far before he swayed. He had never felt so nauseous, nor more in pain. It was incredibly disorienting. Nearly panting from the exertion of the motion, he winced against the light and slowly looked up, forcing his eyes to adjust to things that were less close than the grains of sand coating his wet sleeve.
That was when he finally glimpsed her. A woman so beautiful, his first response was to believe that he was dreaming. That notion only lasted a moment, as the pain was far too realistic and specific to be of the stuff of dreams. Yet she looked like a mirage, a figment of his imagination, transposed over this dreadfully real environment, the product of a nasty head injury. Her hair was white, with iridescent lights in it, almost as though each individual strand were see-through and refracted the sunlight into rainbows. They did not make hair that color. And what girl would actually wear her hair that long?
Her skin was so pale, as if it had never seen the sun, but here she was, sitting buck naked under the full blaze of it. Skin that white belonged to a redhead, and would have picked up UV rays faster than a pretty hitchhiker. Her skin almost hurt to look at, though his eyes were still overly sensitive to the light. Why, he wondered, was he hallucinating nude women? More importantly, why was he here? When he wondered this, his mind conjured up a brief, confusing image of a storm at night, black waters, and a rush of sound, but he had to grimace and shut his eyes to it. The memory was too chaotic and overwhelming right now.
All he could concern himself with was that very moment. It was already too much for him. Thankfully he also did not remain fixated on the woman, and missed her scales, and better still, her gills. Even what he could glimpse of her nakedness could not hold him now. Laying on his right side, leaning on that same forearm, he brought his free arm around slowly to press the heel of that hand - covered with sand and dirt - to his face, wiping it over his left eye and leaving a smear of sludge there. As he flexed that shoulder, he felt stabbing pains shooting down his spine. Dear lord, what had happened to him?
/Shipwreck./
The word came to him and reverberated through his mind. Shipwrecked how and with whom, he had no immediate recollection. Sitting up slowly and with a groan, he began to feel out his legs and arms, realizing with relief that nothing was broken. The vegetation wrapped and tangled around him was a hindrance, which he began to pull off with an irritation which gave him strength. His muscles protested against this use, and his head pounded with a vengeance, but he ignored it until he was mostly free, and then gingerly touched his head injury. Pulling his fingertips away, he saw sticky, fresh blood, and he frowned.
This human flesh wound reminded him of his mysterious companion (who, if still there, was likely not an imaginary person) and he looked over at her, choking out a raspy, "Are you alright?" His voice was not the velvety, deep concoction that it usually was. It sounded rusty with disuse and possibly too much nicotine, but this was not the case. His vocal chords felt like beef jerky: dried, salty, and inflexible.
He realized that the rest of him was in fine working order, however, as he looked at the woman. Half-dead and mostly drowned, he could still appreciate her exposed femininity. Apparently all that was necessary for him to be able to think sexually was a pulse. She appeared unhurt, in fact, she appeared downright /perfect./ Except for a bloodless cut on her ribcage, which did not look so good. His brows furrowed again in concern, but supposing her to be very self-conscious of her naked state (or if she was too disoriented to be, then he should be on her behalf) he said, "here," and began unbuttoning his flannel shirt. His fingers were stiff and clumsy, and it took him awhile to get all the buttons undone, and even longer to then peel it off of his torso (to which his body protested most adamantly, decrying abuse). The black v-neck tee shirt he wore beneath it was mostly unscathed, but wet and clung to him as his flannel shirt had done. He held out the proffered article of clothing, and did his best not to look upon her points of interest, being more of a gentleman than was usual for boys his age.
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