Tygerlander Valentine's Contest 2015 Entry 2

Capture the Moment

“White Day comes again. But you are with me all year. My love Katrina.

He traced the words with his finger. They stood out stark black on the white card. Something about them didn’t feel right. They seemed awkward, clumsy. Haiku was a mirror that reflected the soul, but this didn’t feel like an accurate reflection.

What he felt for Katrina was more elegant than this. A thousand times that. What he had here would give entirely the wrong impression.

He chose another card. “Nothing can break us. We hold each other always. Our love is stronger.”

The second wasn’t much better. He leaned back against the tree and sighed.

The two of them had been together for several years now. They’d seen several Valentines Days together. Their love had never been conventional, but it had brought them both something that they needed. Strength in their weaker moments, light during dark times. They had supported one another. Perhaps words had never been their strong suit, but they had managed to communicate in ways deeper than what they said.

Perhaps he had chosen the wrong medium, but haiku was his art form. It was often how he expressed the sentiments that were most difficult for him. It was the way in which he was honest with himself, and with the world around him. If he couldn’t communicate his feelings for her that way then what hope did he have of doing it through anything else?

White Day was important to him. It was important because she was important. He wanted each one to be as good as the last. That was why he didn’t want to just buy her a trinket or something edible. Those things didn’t express his feelings. Not in any worthwhile way. They were obligatory, unimaginative. That was the mark of a true gift. Imagination was a person’s way of showing they’d thought about the other person. Truly thought about them.

He saw other men giving those kinds of gifts every year and he didn’t approve. Social obligation was one thing. Sometimes you cared for someone because it was your duty, and it was your duty in turn to observe the holidays with them, as tradition dictated. But caring for Katrina wasn’t a duty, it was a choice. He did it because he wanted to do it. Because it was the most rewarding thing he’d ever known.

There was no greater reward than her happiness, and he wanted to make her happy. And while he knew that she would be content with whatever he gave her, because that was her way, he wanted to give her something special.

It felt as though the paper wasn’t catching the haikus correctly. Perhaps it was simply because they were just words, and the sentiment could only be captured by his voice. He selected another card.

“She is everything. The smallest and the greatest. The things that make me.”

He sighed again, and let the cards fall into the grass around the base of the tree.

“What’s wrong with them?” he heard a voice ask.

He turned and saw Katrina leaning out from behind the tree. She had been sitting on the other side, presumably for long enough that she had heard him reciting them, and heard the difficulties he had been having in composing them. She looked flushed, and he hoped that his failure hadn’t embarrassed her too greatly.

“They’re not...”

She shook her head before he could continue. She moved around the tree and gathered up the cards one at a time, looking at the writing on each. A smile touched her lips as she read them, and the flush on her cheeks deepened. He put an arm around her and she pressed herself to his side, laying her head to rest upon his shoulder.

“Do you really think they’re okay?” he asked.

“I think they’re wonderful,” she said, cradling the cards to her chest. Her eyes fluttered closed and she breathed deeply, happy and content.

“If you’re going to take those, I’ll need to find you something else for White Day,” he pointed out.

She shook her head, and he thought he understood.

That moment under the tree seemed perfect in a way that he hadn’t been able to capture on the paper. He realised he had been so fixated on giving her a gift that he hadn’t realised the power of simply being there with her. There was no more perfect an expression of how he felt than that.

=x=x=x=

Day at the Beach

“Do you have everything you need?”

It was the tenth time Itachi had asked, but this might have been the most important dive of his life. They had to get their preparations right, take every precaution. He didn’t want them in the water when they realised they’d forgotten something vital. It might be too late by then.

Ayume placed a calming hand on his arm. It reminded him to breathe. She’d always had that effect on him, but he knew he needed to have his wits about him, for her sake. This wasn’t like when they would dive together before. It would never be like that again.

“We’re not going deep, Itachi,” she said, “even if we were, it’s been a long time now. Everything’s going to be fine. I just want us to enjoy the water, like we used to. That’s all.”

He nodded. She was so rational, and she always seemed to have the answers. Not letting her have things her way just made him seem unreasonable. Most of the time, he was happy to go along with her. As far as he was concerned, she knew best. On this occasion, he’d managed at least to convince her to abide by certain terms.

But if there had ever been a time for another dive, it was now. It was the first time in ten years that the Mana Reef was accessible. The currents in that region were usually deadly, save for one week every decade when the water level plunged and diving there was as safe as a day at the beach. The water pressure of the interceding years altered the reef massively during every cycle, transforming it into bright, new, colourful shapes to explore. He was looking forward to seeing how it had changed.

“You forgot something,” Ayume told him. He frowned at her, and she produced a cord necklace with a shard of rainbow coral threaded onto it. He smiled and stooped so that she could loop it around his neck.

In all his haste, he’d forgotten the entire reason they’d made the effort. They had taken that shard, and one other like it, during their last visit. They were usually kept in a box at the house, but for quite some time they had been like wedding rings to the two of them. Now it was time to wear them again.

“Thank you, Ayume. Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“Are you ready for this, Itachi?” she teased, poking him in the chest, “you’re not getting cold feet, are you?”

“Not at all. I just want to make sure-“

“Hurry up then. Don’t keep me waiting any longer.”

She raced down the beach, slender feet kicking up plumes of wet sand, and then leapt into the water, vanishing beneath the spray. He sighed and ran after her, plunging into the water and kicking down into the depths.

Once upon a time, they’d have swam to spots like this all the way from their beachside home, but they had used a vehicle to cover the distance this time - one of the concessions he’d been able to get her agreement on. Still, he was surprised to see that she hadn’t slowed down in the slightest since they had last gone diving. She moved through the water effortlessly, body undulating like a seal. If anything, he felt like the slow one.

They reached the reef in a matter of minutes, quicker than he had expected. It opened up before them like a valley in the ocean floor, a labyrinth of vibrant coral in every colour of the rainbow. Hot water vents loosed streams of bubbles towards the surface that trickled across the reef’s surface and made it seem alive and rippling. Those vents usually produced water hot enough to cook a sparibster. They created the currents that kept this place inaccessible for the better part of a decade, but now they provided enough warmth to make it as inviting as a hot spring.

Shoals of colourful and silvery fish flitted through the reefs many spaces, vanishing from sight through one aperture and then darting out from another. Molluscs and barnacles clung to the coral, feeding on the moss with hidden mouths. The gulf held the bustle of a city, and it was easy to imagine that all of this life had come to visit the same as they had. Only he knew it had been there before the waters had calmed and it would be there long after they had become turbulent again.

It was a place untouched by the hands of man, save for two deep water hunters who visited only every ten years.

He watched Ayume glide gently into the midst of a shoal passing over the reef. They passed around her, unheeding of her presence as she floated with the current. She reached out with a hand and tapped a couple of them with an outstretched finger, touching points on their bodies that would kill them painlessly. She slipped them into the bag under her arm and then slipped out of their midst.

Her skill hadn’t diminished, ever after all those years. She still had the precision and finesse that had made her an excellent hunter and partner. And she pursued her skills in a way that didn’t threaten the ecosystem around her either. It was the most admirable trait in a hunter, to never take more than what was needed.

She noticed him watching and smiled. She looked so happy. It had been wrong to keep her away from this. She was good at it, and always had been. Of course she had missed it. And she had always borne that so stoically.

An eye opened in the coral behind her, its pupil about the size of her head. The alarm must have shown in his face because her smile vanished and she kicked away, just as the immense, grey body of a crocodile shark exploded out of the reef, demolishing a huge section of the coloured coral. The fish fled and the molluscs hid as it powered through the water after Ayume, gnashing teeth that could cleave her clean in two.

She loosed her bag, knowing it would create too much drag. It vanished into the shark’s maw and it kept coming. She was quick, but the shark’s entire body leant power to its tail. Over a sprint it would overtake and swallow her whole in seconds.

Itachi acted. He slid a harpoon from the strap on his back and loosed it at the shark with all the force of a torpedo. It speared through the water and pierced its flank. A cloud of red spewed from the wound, blood undulating out into the ocean like mist.

It twisted, jaws working, teeth clashing, searching for the threat, Ayume forgotten. It came at him, mouth wide. The harpoon hadn’t slowed it. Had he missed the vital areas?

No. He might have missed its gills, but the spear was lodged close enough that it should have been slowed. The fact that it wasn’t disturbed him. He couldn’t figure out why it was even here in the first place. Crocodile sharks weren’t native to the reef. Their bodies couldn’t manoeuvre through the coral effectively.

Of course, it was always possible that the shark had become caught in the reef before the currents had started up ten years before. Which meant it had been trapped in that valley for the past ten years, feeding on sparse fish shoals and struggling to keep itself alive while it waited for more satisfying fare. Them.

It explained its vicious temperament, its strength, its seeming lack of feeling. It was starving, and it had just set eyes on the meal that would give it the energy to escape the gulf.

He grabbed another harpoon just as it swam in to tear him apart. The metal spear wedged against the teeth at the top and bottom of its mouth and he spun out of the way as it tumbled past, thrashing in a desperate attempt to shake loose the spear.

He weighed another harpoon, wondering how many he would need to pierce its gills with before it would finally succumb. He wasn’t sure he had enough.

Before he could throw, Ayume caught his arm and pulled him away. On dry land, his size made him physically stronger, but he had no such advantage here under the water. He turned and saw her kicking towards a hole in the reef. He followed, though his instinct was to stand and fight. She had always been the tactician, and he trusted her bead on the situation.

He looked at her questioningly. She knocked on the coral meaningfully, taking his hand and placing it to the wall. The cavern she had chosen was sturdy. It had probably survived the jumble of the tides for centuries. It would hold the shark at bay, but not indefinitely. As soon as it had freed its mouth of the harpoon, it would be back to terrorise them again.

Ayume tapped at the tip of her nose and made a fist. He nodded his understanding. The crocodile shark had a prominent weak point on its nose, a natural break in its tough hide where the nerves clustered. They used them as a sensory tool to detect impulses in the water. It was how they found their prey - by changes in temperature, in the currents, by their heartbeats. It was their most potent tool and their greatest flaw.

Of course, it begged the question of how exactly they would reach a spot located directly above its mouth filled with razor teeth.

Outside, he saw the power of the shark’s maw win out over his harpoon, bending it at a right angle and finally dislodging it. It turned in the water, detecting them with ease even hidden by the coral. He was trying to remember the hand signals to ask Ayume what her plan was when she suddenly streaked out of the cavern and out into the open water.

The shark spun in the water, surging after her with its mouth wide. His heart leapt so far into his throat he could practically taste it. He shot through the water after them, kicking off from the wall of coral and swimming as quickly as he had done in more than a decade.

He locked his arms around the shark’s tail fin. His muscles strained as he wrenched backwards, turning himself into deadweight in the water. His grip crushed down on its tail so tightly he felt something break beneath its flesh.

The shark reached Ayume and clashed its teeth together mere inches away from her as she turned gracefully in the water and punched it hard on the nose. The shock that passed through it was enough to shake him from its tail, but he needn’t have held onto it after that. It was dead in the water, and it sank to the ocean floor the moment he released it.

As his pulse slowed to something that felt a little less like a heart attack, he realised what a good deal he had gotten with their retirement. She might not have lost any of her skill as a hunter, but he wasn’t sure how much excitement like that he’d have been able to stand.

It was already early evening by the time they reached the shore. They dragged the shark’s body behind them and he carried it out of the water and onto the beach, tossing it onto the sand at his feet once it was free of the tide’s grasp. They would eat well for quite some time. Even starved as it had been, it was a giant of a creature. The teeth and bones would fetch money, not that they needed it particularly.

Ayume was combing out her hair, a light flush of exertion and excitement on her cheeks. She was smiling significantly more than he was. All the same, he felt he should apologise. There had been an error in his planning, and the day had not gone as he had anticipated.

“I’m sorry that today wasn’t...”

He trailed off, not quite sure how to word it. He’d wanted to give her a day of peace and tranquillity amid the beauty of the reef. It was what she needed. What he’d thought she needed at any rate.

She touched her fingers to his lips and took his hand gently in hers. “I had fun,” she told him, “maybe I wouldn’t want to do that every day, but it was nice to be a hunter again. Even if it was just for today.”

He pressed his lips to her fingertips, then to the back of her hand. He pulled her into an embrace and she relaxed against his chest with a sigh.

She was right. It had been nice, to a point, to relive their glory days as deep sea hunters. But perhaps it was just as much for his sake as hers that they not do it every day.

=x=x=x=