Oh well... at least sitting in Oncology every day gives me time to write. A strangely poignant place to be at the moment, with cheesey Christmas CDs playing and glitzsy decorations everywhere... and astonishing people being brave... K xx

PROTEAS


He felt at home in the subterranean vaults of the oceanarium, tinged with the blue fluorescence of dingy strip-lighting and the eerie phosphorescence of light through massive tanks of water. His face became liquid with the movement of shadows cast by the fluid creatures inside.

Wanting solitude, he ventured past all this strangely mobile life towards the semi-darkness of a tank he thought was empty. Losing himself in its stillness, his eyes became accustomed to the perspectives of light and shade within; the sense of differing dimensions and space. Then, at the back, he thought he saw a girl sitting motionless, head bowed, her face obscured by swathes of billowing hair.

He returned to the same spot day after day and eventually the she-creature became drawn to his dark shape outside her glass. She would tentatively approach the window at the lightness of his tap, and peer through almost sightless. Her eyes were filmed with translucent, shell-like scales and her lower body seemed soldered like a log, barely able to move. It made him weep the way she would seek, perhaps, to make contact – knowing that she really couldn’t see him and could only follow the movement of his hand across the glass in slow-motion: like a moon-walker, always slightly behind and with no gravity to sustain a connection.

As time passed, he noticed she was responding quicker, moving freer, easier. And her eyes and hair were beginning to display lustre and life. Her limbs were becoming looser and he wondered if, one day, she would grow legs that could walk…

An inquisitive boy wandered off from the crowd, walked to the end of the labyrinthine corridor and stood puzzled in front of the last tank in a line of those seeming long unused. This one had a strange look of home: the water seemed lighter, warmer and was quietly stirring as if it had just been left.

On the glass were smeared handprints, trailed across the falling condensation: two sets, different sizes – like father and child. On the floor beneath was a pool of water on which sat an old Stetson – still warm to the boy’s touch. He picked it up, shook it free of drops and put it on his head. Instead of smelling of heat and dust, it had the fresh scent of the sea.