The Conch

image copyright Justin Kerr @ www.mayavase.com

Quivering canyons of fibrous ice surrounded the dead black holes of a calculating iris. The rippling ridges were punctuated by caps of white, bubbles from beneath the glassy surface of that arctic sea. The spots were air, exhaled from deep within a man. The dark pits were his tunnels to the underworld, the access point to the very core of his being. These twin oceans sat wide on his face, the mountain ridge of a nose ensuring that no canal would ever make these two pools of glowing sapphire aware of each other’s presence.

The man touched the spidery fingers of his left hand to a spot of warmth on his chest, where an emerald winked in the soft light. One boney digit coiled the silvery chain that the gemstone hung on around it, reverent, like a peasant trying on a fur. He tugged, carefully testing the pressure of his bond, his finger coloring a soft violet in the process. Sharply, the man released the coil, letting the gem fall with a soft thud against the pale expanse of his bare chest. The broad plane expanded, puffed with air from a deep drawn in breath of cold, moist spring air.

A growling sigh rubbed against the sides of the man’s throat as he knelt down, as he dug his hands into the soft, wet earth, and as he felt the claws of fresh young roots fighting his hands. His shoulders rippled as he clenched his fists inside her, inside the mother who bore them all, and who would eventually embrace each life again. Dark hair shuddered against his scalp as a crackling twig caught his attention, causing those piercing blues to rocket off and lead his head sharply to the right.

Three strange women met the intensity of his bright gaze. Long, doe ears stretched from the sides of their broad faces, each adorned with two oblong, curious ellipses. A conch shell dangled between the bare breasts of one woman, peach and pale against the nutmeg of her damp skin. A ripple of awareness shot through this one, skin shuddering as though to shake off some invisible force. The graceful ears of the other women twitched back, then rotated forward, acknowledging their leader’s tension.

Wordlessly, the woman wrapped her short, square fingers around the conch, and her thin, muscular arm raised the filed down mouth to her own thin lips. She blew, a sound like the earth splitting emerging from deep within the folded petals of the shell. As one, the herd moved away, soundless against the damp suction of the forest floor.

And the man moved with them, dirt flying as his hands escaped the ground.

His hair rippled in waves behind him, mimicking the tense ripple of every muscle in his body as he asked it to give more, more speed, more power, more distance. The lean backsides of the women shone before him in the morning light, dappled in the shadow of the leaves above. He felt the jaguar in his muscles, the hungry cat driving him onward, spurring an excitement beyond anything civil and into the primal realm of the hunt.

Yet the hungry cat was a slow beast. No match for the lightness and endurance of the fleet-footed women. He knelt down beside a tree, leaning his arm against the sandpaper surface, and letting his sloped forehead come to rest lightly on his forearm.

His breath came in fast pants, and he pivoted, letting the smooth roots of the tree cradle his weary form. The man almost didn’t hear the rustle, a soft crunch against the layers of rot on the forest floor. He looked up, locking eyes with the doe again, her ears tucked back and then pivoting forward, waiting for a sign, waiting for him to leap again.

When he didn’t, she pressed a small, elegant foot forward, toes first, then her foot curling from side to side before her heel hit the ground with her first step. The woman blinked, lowered her head, tossed it, and stepped closer. The beads of a necklace clung to the front of her, pressing into her skin with the weight of the massive shell it supported.

A coy smile lifted the corner of her mouth, and lit up her dark eyes with the strange light of knowledge and foresight the man could barely begin to comprehend.

“I give myself to you.”

“I accept your gift.”

In one motion the space between them was closed. One great leap and his claws were in her, tearing her, taking her. She brayed, stunned at all the sensations of life flowing into her and out of her in one instant. Dark fanged jaws closed around the thin tendons in her graceful neck, compressed the nutmeg skin into a gushing hole that flushed the color from her flesh and dampened the light from her sightless black eyes.

The dark sleek form above her quivered as his mouth closed around each delicious morsel. His whiskers painted incoherent calligraphy along her pelt, red lettering yet to be invented or translated by mankind.

When he was done transcribing the story of her life, he left her, bones wriggling down into the soft embrace of the spring soil, still hoping to fulfill her destiny, to give forever. And in the distance, the bellowing sound of a conch coiled and reached high to the canopy of the forest, singing to the trees, and singing to the beat of the spinning dance of life.