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larissazageris · 7 months

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The Strand

A scientist and a poet make strange discoveries beyond the sea.

Day One

I did not come to Ballymore Strand for her. I came for the Nautilus Bloom.

I am a scientist. She is a poet. However romantic that sounds on paper, we’ve proven it isn’t romantic at all. Whatever was between us is over now — except the public collaboration, of course, for the funding.

The poet has spent half of hers already. On watercolors. I have never seen her pick up a brush in my life. But she has a rather florid style. Maybe it will translate.

She calls herself a “student of the shore.” She is here to write poems. I am here to make discoveries.

I will prove the Nautilus Bloom moss in fact exists here, in fact it thrives, in fact it heals — and she will write a little ditty about it.

The things papers wish to print. The hoops men of science must jump through.

We arrived at the seaside this morning. It is beautiful and cruel. The waves are music to me — the sound of work. The air tastes of salt and sunrise. Even now, in early evening — rays of day streak the sky.

The poet may have influenced me some.

She stays up at the Strandhill Inn. I am safely tucked into The Ballymore. Work begins tomorrow. Work, and only work.

My wife never knew. And now there is nothing to know. I have told Rosemary not to worry. I am a scientist. And a man of my word.

Day Two

Stormed all night and day. Then into night again.

She came to me with wine. A toast. “A rolling stone gathers no moss, and neither it seems, can we.”

I’m sure she practiced it.

Anyway. At least that temptation is out of the way now.

Now I can focus. No more of her.

I know tomorrow the sun will shine.

Day Three

Took driftwood samples today. All of it, smooth as bone.

Every piece bobs at high and low tide along the shore, tethered to something beneath the water by pale, silvery strands. The threads are thin as a spider’s web. They smell of salt and burnt sugar.

I cut one with my pocket knife. It bled an impossibly thin sliver of jelly that sparkled when it dropped into the sea. The released fiber swirled into a delicate rosette. I reached out to touch it, and it disappeared.

Patel was right — these conditions are best for it.

And I am right — the moss responds negatively to human touch.

I must find a way to keep the bloom. To put it to work healing something more significant than wood.

Day Five

She tells me the waves are her lullaby. And that her poems are “coming along.”

I ask her to show me some of them over dinner. She says they are not ready to share yet, and is hurt when I scoff.

She says her work is like mine — “iterative.” I don’t know why it irks me to hear it. I tell her, my work is work and hers is play.

“Play is as important,” she says. She means it. I wonder if that’s what it is for her, all day and night. Playing.

“It’s discovery of a different type,” she says — choosing to ignore my “pouting,” as she calls it. She raises her eyebrow as if to say, “I am teaching you something, and you love me for it.”

But I do not love her.

“It’s what the paper likes to print,” I smile. I don’t want to fight with her tonight. I want to get back to my notes. I want to harness the bloom. Make medicine out of it. Make history.

“What would this world be without those who would study the sea, and those who would love it for its mystery?” she asks.

“Are you asking me or are you drafting, darling?” My voice is dry as toast.

She loves this about me, I know — my wit. My cruelty.

That night, I walk her to the hotel.

We make love furiously behind it.

It is always this way with us — stealing time. Even when not a soul is around to charge us with the crime.

I must stop. I will stop.

Why doesn’t she?

Day Seven

Some women have a way of staring at you when they want you. A way they think is hidden, and is not.

The poet does this.

She wanted to show me something at dinner tonight — a small rosette, no bigger than the pen-tip she carried it on, pulsing like a faint heartbeat.

A Nautilus Bloom.

She slid the bloom from her pen-tip to her fingertip. Then she angled her finger, and let the rosette slip into her palm. She opened my hand with hers, then tipped the bloom into my open palm.

It evaporated on contact. As if my hand were a poison, and so unlike her own.

She had the nerve to ask me, “Is this what you’re always searching for? Something you love but cannot keep?”

I left the stupid cow to pay her own bill.

I spent the rest of my night hunting blooms in the moonlight.

I only saw three.

All of them recoiled at my touch.

Now my legs are chapped from the sea. But my heart is stout.

I will get my name on that damned moss if it kills me.

Day Ten

The sun is harsh today.

I have sent for Patel.

I cannot stand sharing discoveries with this poet. I need a brilliant scientific mind to approach this with me. Not an artist who doesn’t know what she’s playing with.

I have asked him to bring along the Roberts Notebooks on the Nautilus Bloom, from the Old Age. To read them hurts my eyes, but I need to.

There has to be something we can use in them. Something I’m missing while I’m out here, distracted by her.

Patel and I will get somewhere.

And then I can get away from her.

Day Fourteen

Rained again.

Patel is delayed. His train makes the crossing tomorrow.

The poet and I pass the time.

Why do I do this? Surely in the city affairs can be more pleasant than this.

She is in love and I am not. I know this. She knows this.

She weeps after, every time, at what she and I both know will not change.

Still, she comes to me.

I do not go to her.

But I never have to wait long.

Day Seventeen

I have not seen the bloom in days. But the poet has. Damn her.

Patel came with the books. I found him at the restaurant downstairs, poring over them with her.

The way he moons over her. Is he aware he’s half her age? Is she?

Obscene.

If she is trying to make me jealous she should consider herself instead. Patel is a young man. Marriage is not on his mind. And she grows older every day.

I sent Patel home. Blamed the rain — didn’t want him stuck up here on the coast in bad weather. Take him from his studies, etc.

I will learn the secrets of the bloom myself, not with the help of a lovesick college boy.

Day Twenty

I went walking tonight. I wanted to clear my head. Process my reading. To take the air and, really – to be away from her.

I must remember Rosemary and the children. I must remember myself and my place, and forget for one moment the taste of her.

The curl of her hand around her pen. The shape of her, walking the beach, waiting for me to join her, in the nights after my study.

All of this has to stop.

I was going to tell her so in the morning, after a night of pious and reformed sleep.

But then she was outside The Ballymore.

It was dark, but for the moon. It was very late, since there was moon at all, and not the infernal northern near-midnight sun.

She is a plain girl some nights. Not tonight.

She had climbed down into the tide, using the small stone steps The Ballymore had lain in the sea. She looked like a creature risen from the water. Skirts wet against her legs. Surf crashing against her.

She looked like a god.

I went to her. She touched my arm. I kissed her, and pulled her hair.

Oh, how she undoes me.

We undid each other, there, in the water.

After, she asked me if I would leave her — Rosemary.

Again, I said no.

She made a terrible sound, something between a laugh and a cry. She fled, but tripped going up the stone steps. She can be so graceless when she’s upset.

She fell and cried out. I went to her again, but she jerked away — she had cut herself on the stone step.

Blood shone, almost green, in the dark. I reached for her.

“Don’t,” she spat. No love in her voice now.

I was wrong to ever begin with her.

These spinsters can’t be happy with anything they get.

Day Twenty-One

I have avoided her all day, and been rewarded for my effort.

I saw another bloom. It disappeared again at my touch — but then I saw a small thrall of blooms working on a piece of wood. Many little rosettes lined a seam, weaving it back together.

I could not shake the sense that the moss was letting me watch it work. Letting me observe the healing. Urging me on my quest.

We are in league, the moss and I.

I feel renewed.

Day Twenty-Three

She was in the water again tonight.

I wasn’t going to her — I was going to the blooms.

I wanted to see if, in moonlight, I could trap one.

Instead, she trapped me.

We were voracious.

The things she makes me feel…

The sense she makes me lose.

After, she pulled me close again. Her eyes were bright, and she kissed me hard. Filling my nose with salt spray and burnt sugar scent.

She pulled my hair, pressed against me harder — not kissing. Taking. Sucking life. I jerked away from her. I thought we would drown.

“We already have,” she said. Her voice was not her own. It was bolder. Strong.

I hastened to leave her, and cut myself on the same stone she had.

She stayed in the water, laughing.

I could still hear her after I was safe inside the hotel.

Day Twenty-Four

Damn woman. I have not done work today. I have not left the room.

I am ill.

But the strangest thing — the wound has healed.

Day Twenty-Seven

She will not come out of the water.

I do not know if she will not, or she cannot. I do not care.

Still, I watch her from my window.

I feel better now.

But where my wound was, something grows. Under the skin.

I think I see something moving inside me — but perhaps my eyes are playing tricks.

Perhaps I should send for Patel.

I feel strange.

The sound of waves crashing never stops.

The poet is wrong — the sound doesn’t lull me.

It beckons.

Day Twenty-Eight

I went to her again.

I cannot stop. Neither can she.

She is tethered to the shore now. She is tethered to the sea.

She is woven into it, with the same silvery threads as the bobbing driftwood.

But she is alive, and the driftwood is not.

It is a dead witness to better work wrought. The lace of life.

I was right, after all.

I have measured the strands.

They are of her flesh, and of the sea. Thin as seaweed. Fine as silk.

She is covered in small, silvery rosettes.

I do not try to cut the strands — and they do not recoil from me.

The blooms do not reject my touch.

Neither does she.

She kisses me — but she does not speak.

I think she will if I swim with her. If I stand with her.

If I stay with her — whatever she is.

Was she always this beautiful?

#larissa zageris #short story #coastal #horror romance #weird horror #coastal core #sci fi horror

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