2nd of Spring, 512 A.V.
The sea smelled off. Like spoiled fish, shite and blood all mixed together. It was murky too. Waves curling into a brown froth as they slapped against the shore. That wasn’t even the worst part. Across the beach were littered little pieces of everything. Peoples lives scattered across the shore among the broken pieces that had once been ships. Occasionally you’d see a pale corpse among the salvage, already drawing a horde of black insects that only disputed briefly when you threw something at them. Marino did his best to close their eyes, but most wouldn’t stay that way. They just wanted to stare at the sky. He couldn’t begrudge them that.
When he ran out of fingers he stopped counting. Instead he focused on finding something useful among the wrecked lives of his kin. An when that became too much, he knelt there and cried. Then he raged. Kicking broken pieces of wood, and tearing off his shirt. He might have done more but there was a woman there to stop him. His mother. There to strong arm him down to the ground till he stopped struggling against her. Till he stopped trying to kick her. Then they wept together for what felt like forever.
After he was alone again, patrolling the beach with a whisper of hope. That one of these pale bodies would have the breath of life within them, though none came to take his offer. They were all as dead as drift wood. Bloated now from the sun and heat having gotten to their bodies. Horribly deforming their features so he could no longer tell whom they once had been. Only their tattoo’s remained and even those where terribly misshapen.
Marino supposed they had gotten of easier than those in the northern suvan where whole pods had been wiped out in an instance. Though he didn’t feel lucky. Staring at this devastation, who could? He wound up walking a little further down the beach that day, but he found no survivors. Not even his tavan. Its twisted little body barely recognizable under the broken prow of a casinor. The prow had been sheered clean off, and he didn’t bother wondering what kind of force it took to do that. Nothing mattered anymore. The world was as bleak as it had been last night with the storm howling at the mouth of their cave.
It had been a shite shelter. They hadn’t gone very deep, and even with leaving their ships behind they had to choice those who would rest close to the mouth. Marino would never forget their cries, or their names. He owed them that much at least. Some had survived, but more had not. Much like their ships which had been tossed like a child’s toys against the cliff to shatter into so many pieces.
Marino felt small. Venerable. Like he wanted to walk out into the ocean and let it take him. He knew others felt the same. There had been a man this morning that tried to do that before his family pulled him back into the cave. The man screamed the whole way back, clawing at the sand with a desperation to get back to the water. They eventually got him settled back in the shelter. Artis was his name Marino thought.
He was dead the next morning. Not by his own hand, but by some petching monster man. Bastard had been caught raping a woman and Artis went to intervene. An the man just tore his throat out with his teeth. Marino had seen the body afterward. Of Artis an the monster man. Monster because there wasn’t something quite human about this short man with blue eyes. His skin was the muddy color of the sea, and smooth rocks protruded from various parts of his body. His nails were jagged claws, and his teeth were equally has terrible. His skull had been caved in not long after Artis had expired, but unfortunately the woman expired after less than a bell from her injuries. Marino hope she didn’t suffer where she went next. He was not so naive to think that she hadn’t suffered greatly in this life.
An there was more to come. A vessel came on the seventh day without a blue eye among them. His pod was canvasing the beach in shift by that point to fend off the growing number of monstrosities popping up now and again. The ship came in all slow and friendly like. Marino only knew this because a member of the group had run back to announce the traders. Naturally, Marino had walked to the top of the cliff to see these traders and saw the salvage group approach the ship. Then they started falling. Their screams only echoing up to him a few ticks later. The rest scattered as best they could, but the men aboard the ship rounded up most of them before taking off back the way they had came.
Later he’d learned they had shot the men then grabbed the women. Marino hoped that ship foundered against the rocks, and the women given quick deaths while the pirates drowned. Blood, so much blood. How did these men have an appetite for more? The next time a ship drifted in that wasn’t svefra, they killed them as they pulled in. They had pulled some of their valuables above deck, perhaps intending a tithe of sorts, but that didn’t matter. These people were dead now, and it was time for the living.
Throwing their bodies into the sea, they got back to work. Coming to the beach for whatever valuables they could find. There were new things washing up every day. The corpses stopped coming after the first week, or maybe it had been the second. Their bloated bodies perhaps having been eaten by sharks before they could have been taken in by the tide. Speaking of sharks, they were particularly voracious now, possibly because all of the bodies. A boy went missing, and Marino tucked his head down, continuing his work.
He was cold on the inside, and there was a numbness in his heart. There were no more tears to be shed though. Only work. Sweat, and blood mixed in equal measure as he hauled the broken pieces back to their meager shelter. Day after day it was the same. Death, fear, sadness, loathing, hatred. It was all the same now. Nothing was sweet or bitter anymore. A grey pervaded everything now, and it consumed him. His wounds were all internal. The fever festered, broke, and festered again. No amount of purifying himself would clean his soul now. He was as dead as the rest. Only he was still walking. A soulless automaton who was doing the bare minimum he could to survive. With no end in sight, he continued. Day after day.
