I remember first meeting her; in August, I was six years old.
The wind was blowing, it smelled like salt and somewhere new, a place I had never been. While the air was fuzzying her hair, her blue eyes were smiling, and she told me her name. She was like no one I had ever met before, and like no one I guess I’ll ever see.
She taught me the arts of the sea, to love being in the hands of the waves. To fish, and get fish, and to stay up late; watching the stars. She taught me how the sea glitters in the dark, and how to climb on cliffs. She showed me a way of life, which I had never seen before, her life and Queendom. Where nature was as natural as living, because there is nothing else.
For years, we traveled there, my family and I, to visit this paradise in the sea. And I grew close to this land, closer that I’ve been to any land ever since, and I felt it, knew it with my bare soul. The stones, the birds, gras and trees, the smell and feel of the whole area. And it was all thanks to her, the beautiful woman I idolized the most. It was her childhood kingdom we lived in, for a while.
One sudden morning, it was gone. Sold for more money than any average child can understand. More money than we could ever afford. It was lost. And with that, I lost her as well. And for many years I felt only bitterness; how could she do this to me?
- but what I really came to wonder; how could she do this to herself. Sell her home, which I know she loves more than life. What need wa so great, that she had to part with it. A place which meant freedom, not just to me, but to her.
She loved to climb the cliffs as well, to sit and watch the sea, to sail on it and to be with it. The taste of salt water, while brushing our teeth, and the smell of sun-warmed stones. Or, at least I’ve always thought so.
Maybe I never knew her, maybe the part which I knew was only one side, the little girly side of a woman more troubled than I could imagine. I was just a little child back then, who found a grown up who treated her as her friend. Who gave me everything, for some marvelous Summers, and then took it away.
She was the first woman I ever really so as true as my own Mother, the only one I have really loved as a sister, and the only one I have ever hated as one too. I fell in love with the sea, and have been with it in my heart ever since.
All thanks to her.