Water Music by Ysilme

I. - Waves

The first prompt I was given was: A day in the life: Within the first 1,000 words of your story, show what ordinary, everyday life looks like for a main character in your story. Once you reach 1,000 words, open the next prompt.

The cries of gulls woke him. Some mornings it was gulls; some mornings just the sea. He lay still, eyes closed, listening. Waves were rolling up the beach, gentle waves, moving the pebbles with a soft swishing sound. A familiar sound, like - music? He was not sure. He remembered music; but there was also so much he had forgotten, and sometimes he could not tell if he remembered correctly. The waves evoked another memory, of somebody floating in the water, long hair streaming behind, unfathomable eyes the colour of the sea. Sounds, like the swishing pebbles, the waves, and the wind. A voice, barely distinguishable from the sound of water, joining him in song. A voice he had known since he was small. He remembered listening to it on another beach and, later, at the day of the blood. But that memory would not come.

He opened his eyes. It was early still, the sun sending her first rays over the horizon, and the air was fresh and cool. The sky was painted in colours both soft and yet so inense that they hurt, but it was a good kind of pain, a pain that wanted him to do something. But he could not remember what this was either. With a sigh, he sat up, wondering faintly why he did not remember so many things. At least, by now, he did remember some.

Before, there had been just a grey fog. But one day, he had realised that there _was_ fog, and then it went away, gradually, returning memories to him. His sense of self. His name. Maglor. He was Maglor. Hunger and thirst. Tiredness. The fog was gone now, at least he thought it was, and more memories returned to him every day. He noticed the passing of time again, separated in days and in nights. He slept when it was dark and, when it was light, he walked. Found water, found food, although not much; he could not bear to eat anything that lived, and there was not much else. Moss, seeds and sometimes berries or mushrooms, and seaweed, grass or bark when he found nothing else. Later, he remembered roots, and found himself a stick to dig for them. He remembered eggs, and he ate one, but then he remembered that they were alive as well.

A pang of hunger brought him back to the present. The gull was sitting at his feet, staring at him with a tilted head, and when their eyes met, jabbed at. Maglor jumped up, cursing softly, and shooed the gull away. There was some blood, but it did not scare him now, and he walked into the water to wash it away, and wash his face and hands.

Then he started off along the beach, as he did every day. Walking, watching, observing the sea and the sky, forever changing and yet somehow always the same. Finding food when hunger pained him, resting when he grew tired. Waiting for more memories to return. Waiting for familiar places to turn up, although he had no knowledge where he was, and if there still existed any familiar places, or all were gone under the sea. Waiting for the fragments of his old life to come together.

He remembered the sound of the pebbles swishing in the waves, and a song rose inside, strong and sad and beautiful. He sang.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~