She Became Eternity

This is a story I wrote recently, and decided to share it with my lovely readers!

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Every day Gwyn would come to the beach, to watch the sea waves in the magnificent silence, which she praised above all. It was the only place she felt happy and relaxed. Sea was a wellspring of life for her, and the smell of it reminded her of childhood.

Every day of the year Gwyn came there, and watched as the waves clasp one another in eternal harmony. She loved observing the sky too; from the richly coloured sunsets to drab and grey skies in the winter. No matter how she felt or what had happened to her that day, the moment she stepped on the colourful pebble stones with her cherry red rain boots, all was calm again. Voices inside her head were silenced by the sounds of the waves. Tranquility and solitude refreshed her mind from daily worries and despair.

Gwyn has never achieved anything in her life. She longed to be a ballerina; she spent her childhood admiring Degas’ paintings. To her childish eyes they seemed like another world; world of theatre and ballet. On the candlelight the ballerinas came to life; more elegant and vivid than in day light. But this fascination with the fanciful world of theatre, the beauty and opulence of the stage contrasted so much with her drab bedroom in a council house. She thought it strange how one shiny red velvet curtain divides such different worlds; a vivid world of dreams – the stage, and a grey world of reality. Gwyn hoped to be a ballerina too, but fate had other plans – she had nor the talent, nor the money, nor the courage to follow such grand passions. She became an actress instead. The moment light hit the stage and the whispers of the audience stopped, Gwyn shone like a star, her voice trembled, her cheeks blushed, her eyes filled with tears. The theatre life was vivid, the real one – engulfed in solitude.

Which is the real life? The one she enjoys living, or the one she is forced to endure? – These questions wandered through her mind while she sat on the beach, eyes fixated on the sea. On the stage she can be everything she wants, she can feel; love, fear, tremble, cry. In real life, she feels nothing. Her soul is as empty as the sky above. The insignificance of her life was unbearable. She could not endure it any longer.

One drab Wednesday afternoon Gwyn was again sitting on the beach. Sea always reminded her of eternity. She gazed at the waves and the flickering sea foam, overwhelmed by the beauty and harmony that stood right before her eyes. But how little, plain and immaterial she felt compared to the sea! She longed for the power to disappear, not die, but calmly fade away… into the waves, into the cold water, into eternity! These thoughts filled her heart with rapture. She stood up, trembling from excitement, and walked slowly until she was approached by the sea waves. She stepped out of her red rain boots and walked barefoot into the cold seawater.

‘It has been found again.
What? – Eternity.
It is the sea fled away
With the sun.‘*

She whispered into the sunset, her body trembling, not from the cold water, but from delirium. Gwyn continued walking into the sea, finally free from the lightness of living, until, carried by the waves, she became wholly amalgamated with the sea. Gwyn vanished into eternity, fully immersed into the emptiness of life.

All that was left of her were a pair of cherry red rain boots. Until the waves swept them away too.

*Rimbaud