Salma: A Memoir [Shipwreck Creative Writing Prompt Round 3]

Salma

Salma lay on the beach, like a whale offering her life to the coming tide. The man had left her. After so many years together, he had simply grabbed his sword and cast her aside. He had knelt beside her for a moment, and at the time that was enough. But that moment passed too quickly. And so he left, without so much as a backward glance.

It was fine, as this was her lot. She sat under the fierceness of a relentless sun and waited for him to return, the man with such a purpose. She couldn’t quite understand it, his need and his urgency, but she knew it was of great import to him. And for that she could wait.

She still felt the weight of the things he left with her: incidental things, like his toothbrush, or his extra pair of boots, even the gilded charm that was so precious to him had been left behind. It had been given to him by his father, a family heirloom. Surely he’d return for this.

As the sun reached its zenith, she remembered their time together, when he would bring his daughter with him and they would enjoy an outing close to the shore, finding unexplored islands or fishing in the bay. The cry of shock and joy when she caught her first fish, or the awed silence watching the sun rise on the bay. That little one was just as much a part of their lives as they were to each other. At the time, she thought they were inseparable. But the child hadn’t joined them on this last trip. It had been just the two of them, and now it was just her.

Shadows grew long and the waves began encroaching on her as the tide came in, pulling her away, back home. Yes, it was time, and she couldn’t do prolong her wait. Yet she still faced the shore, scanning, hoping, he would reach her in time. As the shoreline shrank to a thin tan line, the sea in its eagerness to retrieve her hurtled her against the jagged rocks of the harbor.

A deep fissure tore her in two, the water cascaded in like a waterfall within the cabin, blanketing everything within its briny embrace. She slowly sank as the sun also sank. She knew this would be the last she’d ever see of the sun and that terrible shore where she lost her captain.

Many years she slept in her abyssal bed, where only faint rays of sunlight would deign to touch the tip of her prow. And in those scant moments, the light would reflect off of the gilded charm that was still hooked onto the tiller where he’d left it. Although now, it floated aimlessly at the gentle insistence of the sea. The light it reflected reminded her of the light of the man’s smile, how he looked when he was at sea. That light held her together somehow, through all this time.

From the depths of her sandy berth, she witnessed the tumult of storms. Other times, the stillness of tombs. Both passed with time and patience. She had her memories to keep and to hold, as the last duty she could fulfill for the man she had carried. If only to bring a smile to his face once more.

Until that day when a shadow was cast upon her. It wasn’t the shadow of the various fish that would visit her and explore her chambers, but a different shadow, in the shape of the man. For a moment, she hoped that somehow this new man would take her back to the surface and share with her his life.

Yet she knew as he explored her deck and the tiller, as he took the precious chain from its home, that he would not bring her back to the sun and the waves. Instead, she was looted like a corpse, stripped of her memories and of her dignity.

The diver swam to the surface, a bag full of her former captain’s things, the things she had held so dear. His swimming had stirred up the waters, and the paint on her stern began to flake off, the letters SALMA drifting with the placid movement of the water. The new man, it seems, would also take her name with him as he went.

_{Author's note: "Salma" means "loyal" in Nordic languages. This story picks up from Round 2, Sevarg's story,

as he leaves the boat on the shore to go fight the Leviathan.}