The waves crash along the lake shore fluidly, rhythmically. Their soft hush creates a whisper, carried by the wind’s invisible slender fingers. A breeze brushes by me, placing delicate kisses along bared arms and lacing through free flowing golden tendrils of hair. The voice of the waves is quiet, one only I can hear. The language is strange, foreign, ancient. Though the words are not of a language I know but instead of a long forgotten one. It seems I can grasp what they were saying just by allowing them to pass through me. It calls to me…drawing me dangerously close to a rocky shore two hundred feet below me. The wind shifts, growing slightly more violent and now slapping my face with gusts of air, warning me of some unknown threat. I ignore it; ignore the burning of my cheeks in the cold. Instead I revel in the unending beauty that surrounded me. The once calm waves are churning, one wave battling another until they finally come smashing together in a symphonic symbol crash. I listen to the orchestra of sounds nature created a while before I’m drawn back into the trance. The phantom voices return, without faces, without words. They transcend beyond words. I had been part of them, and they me, for centuries. This sea, it was my home…where I belonged. In essence it was me…but all that changed so long ago in a mere instant. My fond curiosity of the world around me saw to that. In a few moments of heartache and pain, my destiny had come crashing down around me and had destroyed all that I once lived for. Something new remained and my definition of life was reinterpreted completely…all because of a one mortal boy and the power he held deep within his heart.

The day was just like all those that had proceeded it. Time flowed ever on leaving my simple world alone in a puddle at its feet. Everything seemed to have stopped in the blue currents of the water, as if the waves of time could not compete with the mighty sea. The water swirled about and around me, cradling my still form as one might a lost child. I gave myself fully to the sea, letting it wash me and carry it me wherever it willed. The spirit of the water whispered in my ears, beat with every pulse of my heart, flowed in with the life giving air with every breath. It was as much a part of me as the blood that flowed in my veins or the skin which bound me to this mortal plane.

The thought that anything could change my way of life, the only life worth living, was foreign to me. More than that. It was impossible. The wide currents of water were mother, father, and companion. The soft voices of the sea all the friendship I needed. Everything was fine as I stared at the azure sky above me, clouds dancing in their strange and fluid dance. Storm clouds rising on the horizon. Sand was suddenly beneath me as I drifted into my port for the storm.

The white sand welcomed me to the land as a cool breeze chilled my bare form. I walked into an already prepared cave and pulled on the long, trailing blue garment that had been a gift of the Mother Sea on my fourteenth birthday. It still fit after a three years of growth and travel.

The blue material hugged my form, banishing the cold brought on by the wind. Sharp rocks stung at my feet from the floor of the cave as I walked deeper into its recesses. Turquoise light began playing on the walls as I walked into a small alcove with an entrance to the sea. A small reef had grown in the shallow waters and brightly colored fish darted in and out of its many hiding places. I dipped my feet in the warm waters, humming a tune that only I knew. The water lapped against my legs, caressing the pale skin with a lover’s touch. The fish darted around my feet, pausing to nibble at my toes before shooting back into the safety of the reef.

I lay down, one hand still trailing in the blue water, and let my eyes shut as the forerunners of the storm beat outside. Soft rain begins falling as thunder echoes, roaring across the ocean. Slowly, sleep steals in on the soft rhythm of the storm.

Thunder woke me from the pleasant dream of smiling faces and laughing voices. I looked towards the front of the small cave where the rain was pounding outside and thunder grumbled. Lightning flashed, illuminating a figure falling into the threshold of my safe haven. I rose, feet rushing to the still form that had collapsed into my solitude, breaking the barrier between me and the outside world with only a crack. The first fracture that would lead to these walls crumbling. His body was heavy as I dragged it slowly across the rocky floor to a safer abode. Another flash of lightning showed my visitor’s face.

His hair was the color of a golden beach with skin burned by the harsh sun on his exposed features. Something about him held a look of innocence in his soft face; innocence under laid by a layer of impurity. A demon who had turned into the greatest of the angels.

His eyes opened, slowly fluttering in the darkness. Water slid down his face, falling to the floor in another brilliant flash of lightning. His eyes were the same blue as that of the deepest ocean currents, drawing me to this mysterious man.

“Who are you?” he asked. The words sounded coarse and harsh in comparison with the soft whispering of the sea, but I understood it none the less.

For a moment, I was puzzled. Who was I? Finally, an answer struck me. Not what he wanted, but it was an answer. “I am me.”

Anger briefly flared in the placid pools of his eyes. “Give me a straight answer!”

I turned my head to the side, observing this peculiar show. Finally I shrugged. “Who are you?” I asked, the words foreign and clumsy to my tongue.

“Carvon Lanchershire, now, please, tell me your name.”

I rolled the name along my tongue, thinking. I had never had a name. What was the use? I looked at him again, the anger gone and now replaced with an infantile helplessness. He moved, sitting up against a wall, regarding me with a guarded curiosity mingled with fear.

“I do not know. I have no name.”

He looked astonished. Finally he began to speak. “Do you even know where this is? What are you doing here? How far are we from Irdian? What type of storm is this? Has anyone else been here? How can you not have a name?”

Anxiety tinted his features as his hands began to ring the wet fabric of his shirt. I simply ignored the barrage of questions, turning my eyes once more to the storm. Dawn was starting to tint the horizon with a soft, feathery pink. The storm was abating, fading over the sea and out towards the sunrise. I could hear him breathing heavily in the cave, fear rushing his breaths.

“I don’t know.”

I could hear him trying to say something anything, then only silence. When I looked back, he was asleep again, troubled expressions chasing themselves across his face. I let him sleep as the sun rose to burn away the clouds, glinting of the inviting water, begging me to return to its comforting embrace. But I couldn’t leave him. If only I had possessed the courage to do such a thing, the cracks would have stopped and my wall would still be here, protecting me with a barrier of water.