Only Shades of Grey

So I was sitting on a rock at Ruby Beach, sipping tea with a starfish. It had seaweed draped across its spines, the starfish, not the tea, like a shawl to ward off inclement weather. And it held the delicate china cup in one of its seven rays, the saucer in another. I sipped Lady Grey; it sipped Rooibos. The starfish exhibited splendid colour differentiation, violent purple shading slowly to crimson red, across its aboral side.

We sat and sipped and chatted about its life in the Indian Ocean, the adjustment from warm current to our much colder Pacific Northwest climate, and the resulting brittlization of its ossiclic self. I was quite fascinated, as I am sure you would have been, when I heard a strange sound, a groan...no...a bit of a wail more like, and I turned to the shore where stood a viking with arms outstretched to the sea.

I watched as this weathered norseman cried in anguish to the god of the sea, the god of the sky, whatever god he worshipped, his voice lost to the sound of ocean surf, breaking waves too loud for us to eavesdrop on his plaintive conversation.

Then he dropped his arms and took from the pocket of his furry vest a scrap of paper. Looking down, no longer at the sea, he began to roll the paper between the palms of his weathered hands until it was shaped like a cylinder which he then put between his dry, cracked lips and reached again into the pocket of his furry vest to withdraw, this time, a bottle. Holding it in one hand, he removed the corked stopper with the other, and took the paper from between his lips to slide it into the bottle. He then replaced the stopper and set the bottle down, firmly grinding the butt of the bottle deep into the sand.

He raised his head, again to face the sea, tossed his wild mane of white hair back, and raised one arm above his head as if to signal, "Forward MARCH!" Then he walked with determination into the ocean, chest puffed out as if to break the waves before they broke him, and slowly disappeared beneath the turbulent sea.

I watched until naught but the very tips of his fingers remained and, when they, too, slipped silently into the deep, I turned to the starfish and said, "Well. What do you supposed THAT was all about?"

The starfish gave a shrug, adjusted its seaweed shawl, and turned to look again to shore. My gaze followed, whereupon I saw The Grim Reaper who was standing in the very spot where only moments before a living, breathing man had stood, albeit from a past long gone. The Spectre of Death bent down to pick up the bottle and, carefully wiping the sand from the butt of the bottle with a long fringe of his black shroud, he turned to gaze thoughtfully at the sea.

He removed the corked stopper with bony fingers, but did not remove the contents; instead, he brought the bottle slowly to his lips, and blew a puff of spectre breath into the bottle. He then set the bottle down, firmly grinding the butt into the sand, pocketed the cork and then turned to focus a shrouded gaze directly at me.

I squeaked and turned, startled, back to the starfish. "Oh dear," I said, "Why is he looking at me?" Then I turned again, and the reaper was gone.

I set my gilt-edged saucer carefully down, then set my china cup upon the saucer, taking care not to spill a drop for I have only one more teabag of Lady Grey left, and I climbed down from the rock and waded to shore.

I walked slowly to the unstoppered bottle and picked it up and looked inside, but there was no paper, just a tiny little pile of grey silt ash. And a puff of seabreeze caressed my shoulder at that exact moment, and tickled my neck and chin, and stirred the ashes in that bottle to lift them and swirl them into the shape of a dead man's soul which dissipated as quickly as it had formed.

And I turned and looked at the sea and thought to myself, a dead man should at least have his coffin, and I flung the bottle into the ocean with all my strength and it landed in the exact spot where the tips of a viking's fingers had given up, and the bottle bobbed for a moment or two until the breaking waves filled it with their lifeblood, and then it slowly slid beneath the surface, into the deep.

And I turned and looked towards the rock and there sat my Dream Angel drinking the cup of Lady Grey, and she set the cup and saucer upon the rock and spoke softly, yet I could hear, "It's time for bed, fluff." And she reached down to take my hand, for I stood at the rock now, and she led me to my bed, the one there, not here in this world, and pulled the magic covers up to my chin. She kissed me softly on the forehead, dropped the starfish into my glass of water, and turned out the light...