(Trifling through old files: Summer 2006) Akiyo and the Aching Seas

It's fun to look back on old writing, you can kind of see if you're making any progress:

Akiyo sat looking across the bay. The night had an unusual tremor to the air, a wailing rose from beyond the horizon. Her hands were cold. She went inside to wash them in a sink of warm suds. Drying them, they were patchy and to touch the surface of her palm would whiten the skin. Mother and father were asleep, the chortling had stopped and the whisper of the bay washed throughout the rooms of the house. Akiyo drank fruit tea, spilling the steaming drink on the table, the cup stung her hands. She returned to the steps outside that looked out across the black sea. The wind wandered across the sand and fell in a heap below the dunes. The murmur of the night had increased, only intermittent now. A figure was lying in the glare of the moonshine on the white sand. Akiyo stepped down to the beach to see that it was a woman lying there, her eyes were closed. Akiyo touched the woman’s wrist which startled her, she sat-up:
“You scared me,” said the woman, checking Akiyo over.
“I thought you were dead,” Akiyo said, clawing her toes into the sand.
“I wish,” said the woman. Her hair fell about her shoulders as she sat up, she dragged her curls through her fingertips. Akiyo sat down next to her.
“What are you doing out here?”
The woman gestured out to the water, “it keeps me awake all night.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s not even that I mind. What do you think it is?”
“I think it’s the sea.”
“Silly, it’s the sea.”
“I think it’s what it has to say when it thinks no one is listening.”
The dark waves had made ground on the two while they were chatting, dragging closer toward their toes before receding with a scurry, back into the deep.
“I think it’s true,” the woman began, “that things are said but you aren’t listening, and that you don’t necessarily need to know.”
“You can only hear so much,” said Akiyo.
“You can’t know everything – like the sea – she knows everything, all she would need to know.”
“Nothing, then.”
“Nothing.”
The woman got to her feet, she said goodnight to Akiyo and disappeared beneath the dunes. Akiyo listened to the howling, she cupped a handful of the white sand, spilling it over her bare legs. The moon had crept beyond her head when she unplugged herself from the sand and went back into the house. Father was sitting at the kitchen table in his silk gown, he watched Akiyo come in. “Hello,” he said.
“It’s late,’ Akiyo replied. ‘I should be going to bed now, goodnight,” she was halfway up the stairs.
“Alright,” father said. “But it kept you up when you were a child, too, you know.”
“What did?” said Akiyo, stalling at the top of the staircase.
“The whales, they make that noise, passing in familial groups,” father approached the staircase. “It’s very complex.”
“They were singing?”
“One has died, or perhaps they’re in love.”
“Whales can’t love, that’s ridiculous.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“It was probably just the waves then.” Akiyo turned to move up the stairs.
“You don’t think that. I saw you in the sand.”
Akiyo paused. “My hands are cold again,” she said, putting her hands into the pockets of her dress.
“They’re such wise creatures.”
“Like you I suppose.”
“They must laugh.”
“Oh, so they laugh?”
“What’s wrong, Akiyo?”
Akiyo looked up through the box window to find the moon a droplet dangling in the oceanic night.
“My love, you aren’t yourself,” father cupped the head of the banister with his hands.
“I’m just tired. Goodnight father.”
Akiyo got into bed and listened to the windows being closed downstairs. Father’s bare feet were sucking against the kitchen linoleum, the house-doors clicked shut. The moaning sea could be heard muffled and suffocated by the walls, the rolling echo resonating into the obscurity of Akiyo’s sleep.