Notes

“BOTTLED SEA GLASS”
Completed April 2020.

She spent most of her summers by the beach, her temporary shelter the humble little shack where her Great Aunt resided. Small as it was, the shack did have one key selling point in its location; it was situated right on the shores of the ocean, a textbook beachfront property. But, unfortunately for any interested realtors, it wasn’t exactly the prettiest of beaches. To say otherwise would be a lie. It was plagued with dull waters that foamed and beat the shore mercilessly, wet grey sands speckled throughout with jagged scraps of stone or fractured shells, and a propensity for stormy weather that made swimming rather unappealing. Some of the only color in the area came from debris left behind by the summer carnival, waterlogged popcorn bags and candy wrappers and glitter that clung to the dock stubbornly for weeks afterwards. Most days, the girl preferred to stay inside her aunt’s house, breathing in the heady incense that the woman burned as she thumbed through stacks of old photo scrapbooks on the coffee table, or to go out biking around the neighborhood with the other summer children.

But at the very least, the beach was good for one thing. It seemed to be an unusual hotspot for sea glass shards, washing up alongside the sticky sands and tall, scratchy grasses. Sometimes the girl found the glass tucked behind the worn wooden gates or along the pathway to the beach, while other pieces turned up near the seaside caves. When her Great Aunt noticed the small collection piling up on the girl’s dresser, she had offered up a small medley of jars and old beer bottles in which to collect them. So it was because of this that the girl took up sea glass collecting as a true hobby, and it was because of this that the girl was outside combing the sands during perhaps the heaviest rainstorm of the season.

On the day that the floodgates opened, the girl marched out to the sands early in the morning. This was the time when the tides were just starting to retreat, leaving behind their first gifts of the day. Small seashells dotted the shores, buried between seaweed scraps and driftwood. But the girl wasn’t there for the shells or the wood. She had brought her newest glass collector— a root beer bottle from her last visit to the pier’s corner store.

The girl side-stepped the wet clumps of seaweed, ignoring the dark grey skies and the ominous rumbling of thunder. Gentle fingers skimmed the sands, rolling sandy grit around between their pads until the sea glass shards she knew all too well became visible. Next, she doused them in the ocean’s waters, before dropping them into the long-necked bottle with a clink. She stayed outside for what must have been hours, as the storm brewing overhead drew closer and closer. The root beer bottle filled up steadily, and was almost to the rounded curve of its long neck by the time rain actually began to fall.

Small droplets of cold, cold water pelted her skin. Her toes curled instinctively at the sensation. With a grimace, eyes squinted, she peered up at the skies. Dark, swirling clouds loomed overhead, and another flash of lightning illuminated the depths of the ever-stretching seas. The girl growled under her breath, rising to her feet and brushing off her sand-coated knees. The walk back to the house would take too long, so she’d have to find shelter somewhere else.

Defeated, the girl trudged towards the cluster of jagged stone some fifty yards away, the gaping mouth of a seaside cave she’d not yet had the time to explore. Her hair, drenched by the torrential downpour, was already plastered to her neck, and it was near-impossible to see where she was going. But as she walked, bottle swinging by her side, something large and black as night erupted from the tides. The girl froze in her tracks, day’s worth of sea glass nearly slipping from her grasp as the strange creature thundered across the shores, howling madly as lightning illuminated the skies behind it. She watched it disappear into the caves through squinted eyes. But what on earth was it?

Lightning flashed again, painting the girl’s world white for a moment, and the ground shook with the strength of the storm. There was certainly no chance of making it back to the shack safely, not if the strikes were so close. Left without any other choice, the girl followed the mysterious apparition into the caves.

~

Inside, it was an unpleasant sticky-humid-warm temperature, the stone walls trapping in the salt of the sea breeze. The girl shook herself like a dog, wringing out her hair with a hand, and fiddling with the thin strap of her tank top. As she leaned against the edge of the rock wall, content to wait out the storm at the cave’s entrance, a low whine echoed throughout the cavern.

The girl ignored the sound at first. Instead, she turned the root beer bottle over in her hands, inspecting its contents. She studied closely the colorful glint of sea glass as the shards caught and reflected the dim light available. Thunder rolled overhead, and another long, low whine sailed through the cave. She had no idea what it was coming from— maybe the apparition from before, maybe she was hearing things, maybe none of the above. This time, she would not ignore it. She shook her head, stuffed the bottle into the waistband of her pants, and pushed off of the rock. Might as well go find out.

“Hello?” she called, tracing a hand along the moss-slicked sides of the cave wall as she ventured deeper into the tunnel. The pads of her fingers came away damp. “Anybody there?”

Rustling sounds. The girl’s throat dried, but she forced herself to swallow anyways. “Hello?” she called out again.

There was a glint of something unfamiliar, untamed, in the dark, and the distinctly unpleasant sound of wet flesh sliding against smooth stone. The girl shuddered. “Hello?” she whispered, one last time.

Whatever it was emerged from the shadows. The creature, with its pale skin and glistening, beetle-black eyes, stared at her. Its voice was creaky, hoarse for disuse. “Hiiiiiii,” it croaked, sounding more like a slow-opening door than a word. The creature, on all fours, skittered nervously across the floor. Its body was clad in nothing but a limp, furry... rag, of some sort. It could’ve been an animal’s pelt, once, but the thing was disgustingly sandy and worn.

The girl let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. “There you are,” she said, like greeting an old friend she’d never met before. The creature blinked, glossy black eyes wide, as she reached out to touch it gently. It flinched away, hissing madly like a snake about to strike. She withdrew her hand sharply. “Sorry.” The creature blinked up at her again, curling in on itself and burrowing into the rag it wore. She looked at it again, small and wet and miserable. Also, probably naked under that rag. Gross. “I’m sorry. It’s cold outside. There’s gonna be a lot more rain. Do you need somewhere to stay?”

The creature tilted its head, and after a moment, extended one shaking, bony hand for the girl to take.

~

Her Great Aunt’s kitchenette wasn’t exactly spacious, but in that moment, there was enough room for the ghost of a creature and the girl to sit, waiting for the tea on the stove to boil. The creature was wrapped in multiple dryer-warmed towels and clad in a borrowed pair of shorts. It burrowed into the fabric, wrapped tight, and laid its head against the side of the stove. If the girl wasn’t mistaken, it might’ve been purring. The kettle whistled, so the girl took it carefully by the handle, and doled out two cups worth of tea.

“Be careful, it’s hot,” she warned, passing the cup to the creature. Clawed hands took it, clinging tight, before a pink tongue poked out, sampling for taste. The girl raised an eyebrow, sipping at her own tea quietly. “What are you, anyways?” she asked. The creature, which had decided to trust the cup’s contents, was lapping at the warm chamomile like it hadn’t seen a drink in years. Clearly, too preoccupied to reply.

It wasn’t long before her creature had drifted off, pulled into sleep by the chamomile tea and the gentle pattering of rain against window glass. The girl, as it slept, picked up the ragged brown fur that it had clung to like a lifeline from off the floor. It was surprisingly soft, yet a touch oily. Sand and grit layered the pelt from years of poor care, sprinkling to the floor in droves as she shook it. She frowned, deep in thought, before retreating from the room with the fur in hand.

The creature slept on, oblivious.

~

When it woke up, its coat missing, the creature cried for days. It was inconsolable, simply staring up at the girl with pitiful, tear-stained eyes whenever she tried to ask what was wrong. It refused to budge from where it had curled up in the kitchen’s corner, non-responsive. It never took its eyes off of the ocean through the window.

The girl was worried for the creature. It didn’t eat, drink, or sleep, just wept quietly and hissed at her Great Aunt whenever the woman toddered though the kitchen. A week into the affair, the creature fell silent. Perhaps it had given up. Either way, she was just happy to see it eating the food she brought, even when its usual glassy eyes began to clear, growing dull under the kitchen’s fluorescent lighting.

~

Each faded piece of sea glass dropped into the bottle with a clink. The girl’s creature tracked their descent with hungry eyes, captivated. With one quivering hand, it reached out to touch the glass container. The contact knocked the bottle off-balance for a moment, and the sea glass within it glittered. “Pretty,” it croaked, blinking up at her with wide, warm brown eyes. They hadn’t been a proper beetle-black since the day it ceased crying and moved away from the kitchen window. The girl smiled, indulgent.

“They are pretty, aren’t they?“

It barked hoarsely rather than answer with words (words seemed to be difficult for the creature). A sort of one-two, up-and-down cadence to the sound helped her figure that it must be laughing. The girl handed over the container for the creature to hold. It emptied the bottle’s contents into its hands, holding the shards up to its nose and inhaling deeply for the smell of ocean and salty waters. Faded, but still there.

Reinvigorated, the creature began to leap and twirl around the living room, clawed fingers filled with piles and piles of collected sea glass. “Treasure,” it sang, and for just a brief glimmer of a moment, it almost looked human. The girl saw this, and something about it she found to be terribly tragic.

“I have something for you,” she said, once the creature had stopped spinning and throwing around her sea glass. She left the room, taking care not to step on any of the glass pieces scattered across the carpet. When the girl returned moments later, she held a miserably ragged, brown excuse for an animal’s fur in her arms.

The creature stared at her in disbelief for a second, before its eyes lit up. As soon as she held the fur out as an offering, the creature snatched the thing from her hands desperately, cradling the coat to its chest. It glanced back at her, almost afraid. “Not stealing? Not hiding?”

“No,” she said. “Not hiding, not keeping. I just wanted to clean it up a bit. It is yours, right?” Her creature nodded vehemently.

Outside the house, it was raining ferociously. Water slammed against the walls and the windows, a steady noise that had helped put the creature to sleep once upon a time. Even though it was raining, an ugly downpour that would leave the sands saturated for days, the creature’s head whipped towards the window, grinning its eerie sharp-fanged grin. It immediately took its claws to the borrowed clothes. Once the fabric had all crumbled to the ground in shreds, the creature wrapped itself in its fur once more, and sprinted towards the door of the house.

The girl was at a loss for words. “Hey, wait!” she cried, staring at the runaway creature’s retreating back. “You forgot something!”

But it was already halfway down the beach, barking like some kind of unleashed dog and bouncing enthusiastically. The girl cursed, swept the glass shards into the bottle, and hurried out the door herself in hopes of catching up. Bare feet sent sprays of semi-wet sand flying as she ran, but it was no use. By the time the girl made it to the shoreline, she saw only frothing ocean waters, no sign of her creature clad in a scrap of a fur to be seen. Rain slammed into her from every angle, soaking her to the bone, but she wasn’t going to give up.

“Hello? You forgot something!” she tried, waving the bottle around. There was a familiar huff, and a lithe seal poked its head up from the turbulent waters.

“Thank you,” the seal seemed to sing, voice wavering, rising and falling like the tides that kept it afloat.

Maybe it was crazy, and maybe she was hearing things, but the girl took one look at the bottle in her hand, and chucked it into the open sea. It flew up, over the dirty sands and over the dull grey waters and directly towards the glossy black animal, where it was waiting. Surely enough, the seal caught the bottle in its mouth, teeth clinking against the glass, and vanished beneath the foaming, thrashing tides.

“Goodbye,” the girl called to what she hoped had been her creature, but it was too late. The seal was already gone. She stood alone in the rain, hair plastered to her forehead and salty-watered clothes sticking to her as well. “Huh,” she said at last. As yet another lightning bolt flashed, splitting the skies, she turned around, padding barefoot through the wet sands in the direction of her Great Aunt’s little shack.

She could always find more sea glass tomorrow.