Semi-Random Reflections

Read time: 1 min.

You write by the beach. At least, you try to. The pen won’t move. Presumably you could speak the words, but no one stops to hear them, and that still wouldn’t make the pen move. Anyway, you’ve got no words to speak. You don’t even see the water beside you or the sun above you. You see neon white strips of reflected sunlight crisscrossing on the cliff face in front of you as they bounce off the gentle waves. Those lights feel how the color red tastes.

A message in a bottle taps your chair. The waves clink the bottle repeatedly against the wood, not that you hear it over the splashes you think come from those dancing lights.

Presently a cecaelia wraps a slick tentacle around the bottle’s neck. Raising the bottle, the cecaelia breaks it over your head, then holds the unfurled paper to your face.

“Copy this out!” the cecaelia orders.

You stare at the note. You try to see words in the ink. The swirls of Fs you might take for Ss remind you of waves. Speaking of waves, you notice those lights on the cliff face again. The pen still…