The clouds hung low and heavy over the sea. The only sounds that could be heard were the crashing of waves and the distant shouts of the crew, further inland, drinking, brawling, shouting. Hart stayed on the beach, watching wave after wave roll and break. The dark crashing shapes brought on a deep brooding within him; an awareness of his mortality and the fleeting nature of things that often weighs down upon someone when looking at something greater than themselves. 

    Hart was not like the rest of the men. They were rough and coarse and cruel, seeking trouble and danger for the sake of a pocket full of coin and a headful of tales. Both of which were frequently lost to a good, strong drink, which coincidentally made an acceptable form of payment when gold was not to be had.

    A new life was worth more to Hart than any amount of gold. He had made mistakes and wrong decisions. Often he felt as though he didn’t even know the man he had become, didn’t understand what it was he wanted anymore. He had tried to drink away the stranger in his skin, expecting to find his true self buried down in some dark corner of himself. The haze of liquor did not illuminate anything, rather Hart found himself even more lost in a life he no longer understood. He pondered why he was here and not there but when trying to take himself from there to here he just fell down in a cold alley and threw up on himself. 

    While covered in his own foul, Hart overheard a man boast that his ship was fast enough to escape anything both mortal, natural or supernatural. It was then that Hart decided he would find a ship fast enough to make him a new man/discover the life that he was made for.

    Plenty of the men joined pirate ships to run away from something. Plenty of things couldn’t be outrun quite so easily. Still they came.

    The water was black, its surface broken and choppy breaking up the reflection of the the moon. The clouds had parted enough that Hart could see just how big and orange the moon was tonight. The reflection of its light casting an eerie glow upon the water. 

    The beach dropped off steeply. It felt as though Hart was standing on the edge of a cliff. Shadows fleeted across the surface as the clouds shifted in front of the moon and away again. The shadows resembled dark shapes, dancing and swirling beneath the water’s surface. 

    The creak of the ship rocking back and forth was no longer the only sound on the beach. There was a low moaning but it did not sound like the wind. Was life at sea already making Hart mad? He knew it was common but he had thought he would last longer.

    A flute began to play, a low melancholy sound. Together the flute and the moaning sounded distant and urgent. One of the shadows in the water was not a shadow at all, but a pale figure. Floating just below the surface of the water, the object was tinted green with the seawater. But there was not doubt, it was there, among the dancing shadows of the clouds, iridescent skin or maybe scales, glinting.

    Hart found himself standing shin deep in the water, his boots still back on the shore behind him. He cold no longer make out their shape in the darkness. 

    The shape was further out still, moving not quite right to be caused by the tide. It was a woman, Hart thought, although he couldn’t explain why. Was she dancing? The sound of the flute was getting louder, more urgent.

    Hart took another step, water slapping against his stomach and then his chest. His mouth began to fill with water, but he did not choke. Now the water was feet over his head, all around him was darkness except for the shape. 

    The woman was close now, but she was up above him. His feet somehow were stuck to the ocean floor and as he walked forward to get closer to the woman, he just went further and further down without getting closer at all. 

    The music was pounding in his ears and the woman was dancing furiously, in time with the flute and Hart’s own footsteps. And when Hart realized that he did not know how to reach her, while she was up so high above him and he was stuck so firmly to the ocean floor, the woman slowly turned to face him. Her hair parted from her face and Hart saw a pair of dark, empty eyes. Her mouth was hanging open as if frozen in a scream and from her chest a steady ribbon of red was flowing out. 

    The music turned into shrieking, the kind of shrieking that hart imagined came from the heart of hell itself. Hart’s lungs started to spasm, he needed air, he choked on the salt water and the red cloud pouring from the woman. What had he done.

 

    The further he walked into the strange sea, the clearer it became to him that he didn’t have to run anymore. He had found somewhere he could stay. He had found somewhere he belonged and he had simply to find it in the most unexpected of places. 

    For here underneath the night’s turbulent waves he found his little old shop. It was not quite the same as it had been before he had left, everything changes after all. Instead of apartments and other buildings, his shop lay nestled in a gigantic kelp forest. The dancing shadows and swaying mass of the kelp was more alive than the street had ever been. And in place of the paved road worn beyond repair and covered in much there was only smoothly shifting sand and bits of shell.

 

 

 

    The further he walked the more and more clear to him it became that he had found what he wanted at last. He had to simply find it in the most unexpected place. For here underneath the night’s turbulent waves he had found his little old shop on that little old street. Exactly the way that he had remembered it. It did not occur to him how odd it might be to find a small piece of what you know down underneath the ocean. He walked further and further down the street finding that not only his little shop was there, but so was the rest of his beloved London. The air was a bit fresher than one might usually expect what with the fresh ocean water carrying away the stench of the Thames.

    The more he wandered, the more he found himself back at home. He didn’t even notice that he had stopped breathing. That he had stopped walking. That he was not in fact in a small underwater London at all. He didn’t notice his eyes glaze over or his limbs going numb or the way the undertow dragged him like a rag doll out into the deep. He had found what he wanted down at the bottom of the sea.