Anda I

I

Her world was blue; blue, cold and beautiful.  It was not the only world she’d ever known.  The turtles told her tales of places white and still and silent where fog once slipped in on a breeze, quiet as a runaway child, and never left.  She though she might like that.  She’d seen were there were more ships than fish (at least it seemed to her so young at the time) and every object there is a word for bobbed past her fins.  Trinkets, strange colored water, dead things.  She knew of a mecca the passengers of the great big boats carried little paper cards for.  A place hot, crowded and tense where you could barely flip your tail without bumping into another fish.  Once a gannet told her of a misstep off the great blue map where it seemed there was no water but everything was made instead of froth and rock.  She thought her mind was that world.  She thought her dreams had wings and flew into the night and made themselves that world somewhere so far away enough to keep her safe.  Sometimes she woke up gasping from too much air being forced down her throat and rocks against her skin.

And her world was blue; blue, cold and beautiful.  It was not the only world she’d ever known.  But it was the world she chose.  For now.