Those who are waiting for the squalls to come to them. For all the newer storms to arrive on their shores. To wreak havoc on their coastal towns. To ravage what's left of their beautiful tristful coasts. To drown their remaining children, don't look away now, that's the world we've created, not the world we were given, that's the world we live in. But everything's riven with possibilities now. It's the possibilities that kill us. Remember that.

Will they stand by, when what they've declared for betrays them? Will they still stay with them, their betrayers? For they swear an oath, but it's the nature of the water to do that; to betray. Fickle and whimsical it is. What's a drop of fealty to an ocean. What they've been claiming, clamoring for even, they are not. They are not free, all their hate is for naught.

As for the summer storms, they are coming all of them, they'll be here soon enough. Those watery new songs will visit, stay, and relax on sand dunes for a little littoral retreat. Where that is, it is silken enough to put you in mind of warmer thighs.

All the coastal areas, a well-deserved respite for these savage beasts, hungry though they may be, will be, but they are still a little less savage than the folks they will be pillaging and reaving to their deadened hearts' content. They'll struggle for that pleasure till the storm within storms is quelled, quite so. A little lightning before a lot of thunder.

And then this; a damp peripeteia a sudden wave, like the ocean, is trying to tell us something.

Something golden is shimmering in the depths of this vast ocean, bright and dross nowhere near the surface. It's like the whole sun has sunken underwater but all its glow is dwindling.

However, it's something else entirely. Someone else. That's what they say at least, those in the water there with the creature.

They tell us if you look closely, It looks like a woman, almost human, not drowning, of yellow hair and gray of eyes. Even without the fins, no tail, she's swimming so furiously. She is moving too fast for the feat of being alive to be possibly human. That's how they know she is more, even though she's gone. How fast she is going, even the ocean doesn't know. No visible gills, yet she is breathing under the water. That's obvious, even at a glimpse of what's not there.

Standing near the sea that's licking its chops for something, I hear a clarion blaring.

A sound booms.
Then I hear it again.
Then again.
And again.

A booming sound that's quickly becoming my favorite new song that's worthy. A new song.

But it keeps blasting.

Clarion. Clarion. Clarion. Sounds. Pounding in the rain. Despair, despair, despair.

Something pushing forth from beneath the shallows, trying to break through the surface.

"Where are you?" I say.

No answer. Nothing.

Then I feel as much as hear her standing there behind me, hovering near my ear, drenched and dripping. Funny, I don't hear her breathing. I hear the water roaring somewhere behind me. It's raging, protesting, it wants the best part of it back.

"Here," She says simply.

I don't turn around. I look down and I am nowhere. There's something in my hand. I am holding something and it's steaming hot. I look past my stained jacket sleeve. Fake mermaid on an overpriced coffee cup. Lovely. I glance around. I am still nowhere. It's not even blankness.

Jack Kerouac Alley, we were supposed to meet there.

Where is that now?

Where are you?

But something ate her inside her, ate her up from the inside, inside herself. She's gone. Much like her fiefdom but the sun hasn't died yet. Where she is. The ocean isn't telling. The storms will though. Tell a lot they will.

Though something is still eating away at her, something is still eating her but not from the inside. Something is still eating her but this time from everywhere and all at once.