My mother was the sea. 

 

I could never understand the rhythm of her torrent. The secrets of the elusive poet suffocated beneath her ever shifting surface. I knew little of her past. I knew only that Death may wrest my mother’s enemies from her cold adamantine jaws. Oh, but the Lodestar of the Night would yet fall for the beat of her calming heart. My tender mother rescued me from the abyss of a broken family. Who was I but a stray child who found an unyielding shelter between her pacific arms. I became a devout follower of her decorated word. That her waters would be silenced, I could not have foreseen.

 

As I descend the shimmering steps into the den of lions, the rain pours upon me akin to the day I was fostered. The bioluminescent flora wistfully glows with an unheralded radiance across the foggy gloom of antediluvian marble. As a renowned lieutenant apprentice to the Navarch, my visage must hide in the shade of my rice paddy hat. I slick back my dense, tightly coiled hair into a low ponytail. Lifting the silk scarf that drapes over my robes, I mask my lower face. At my side are my mother’s true children and my closest companions, Uzo and Aslano. Uzo’s tight, bouncy curls flow wet in the wind as she grasps my hand firmly. She glances at me with knowing, desperate eyes. Aslano stands further back, quietly listening to the mystic woods, his hand shaking on the hilt of his sword. He winces, reminded of the grim reality ahead. We venture into the depths of our conspirators. 

 

Uzo motions towards a crowd in the center of a circle of arched stone walls. My narrow eyes peer around the crumbling walls covered in vines. Water droplets fall from the leaves into growing puddles at my feet. I hear her. My mother’s voice leads us through the flood of whispers around the ruins within this conclave devoted to the nation asunder. We navigate to a safe spot in the back near a small shrine. A natural enclosure surrounds this entire temple. This sacred place once rested peacefully and desolately on the outskirts of my once venerated home, Isolei Vinyatu. The garden of the eclipsing star. The glittering palace which has ravaged my true home. 

 

“Navarch Oke’ane! Do you fathom the massacre you have wrought upon our people through your demonic deceit and abuse of stature? You will answer with your freedom! May you find honor in imprisonment. With the blessings of Teya, we banish you to the underworld!”

 

A man in the center adorned with rich ivory and goldleaf robes raises his stave towards the sun in honor of our patron goddess and the architect of our worldly gifts, Teya. Bound to the vine-covered runestone angel statue stands Oke’ane. My mother gazes at the moonlit sky. As the ritual begins, she repeats the hymn of my childhood with relentless vigor at the point of three cursed swords.

 

“A drop of water in the young river creates a lasting ripple whose fluctuations could reach the chaotic ocean… and soon the crashing waves in the night beckon an iridescent uprising.”

 

I start to cry, my overflowing eyes calling my mother to see me. I am here, mother. The supreme slams his stave unto the ground. The rain stopped. I fear the intensifying silence. Nothing is heard save for my mother’s aria and the resounding boom from the marble floor upon which the man stood. The world stands still as we watch the supreme cast the angel Teya and our beloved mother afire. My heart sinks as Oke’ane’s healing voice disappears into the rage of the fire. Though we shall meet our mother again, opalescent tears continue to run down my eyes as she leaves. The flames soared into the sky, a beacon of hell. Uzo buries her face into my chest. Aslano wipes his face with his arm, hiding his pain as a dedication to the diligence of his hero. I place Oke’ane’s favorite flower in the corner of the room. 

​

With that, we leave quickly and quietly before we are detected. As we reach the edge of the garden, I run my hand over the seed of Yvel, the coveted crest which I must bear. I renounce my allegiance to Isolei. I cast away my fear of the realms beyond. As the moonlight did the lost children of yore, my mother’s resonant song roars against an eternal storm, guiding me forward on my perilous journey. I understand now. I will finish what she started.

​

My mother was the sea. 

​

I am it's uprising.