Song Beneath the Rift

The Song Beneath the Rift

By Desarae, "Mama Froggy" Kukus

Prologue: Born of a Tear

I was born from a tear shed in silence. Not a mortal tear, but one that fell between worlds, grief so deep it pierced the veil of realms. It drifted through the currents of memory, wrapped itself in coral lullabies, and bloomed into song. That song became me. Thaloré is my home. A sea that remembers. A realm where emotion shapes the tide, and melody is more than music; it is magic.

I. The Memory Sea

Thaloré does not rage. It hums. Its waters shimmer with memory. The coral gardens pulse with forgotten laughter. The whales sing of ancient joy. The kelp forests whisper secrets in the language of longing.

I am Lirael, a song weaver of the third current. My tail glows with the hues of feeling: aquamarine for wonder, violet for sorrow, gold for joy. I tend the coral with lullabies. I soothe the storms with hymns. Not only that, but I listen to the sea, and it listens back.

But lately, the ocean has grown restless. The currents twist with yearning. Dolphins dream of fire. The jellyfish pulse with grief. And in the deepest trench, something pulses a wound in the water. The Rift.

II. The Rift

It opened after the storm. Not a storm of wind and wave, but of sorrow. A ship was lost. A soul adrift. The sea wept, and in its mourning, it tore open a passage. I found it by accident, or perhaps it found me.

It shimmered like a mirror made of breath. A tear in the ocean’s skin, pulsing with light from a realm of air and fire. The Elders forbade us to approach. “The Rift is a wound,” they said. “To touch it is to bleed.” But I heard something. A melody. Fractured, familiar, impossible. It echoed through the Rift like a forgotten lullaby. And it called me.

III. The Surface Soul

I returned to the Rift each dusk, hiding behind kelp and coral. I never crossed. I only listened. The shimmer between realms pulsed like a heartbeat, soft and steady. Sometimes it sang to me fragments of surface sounds: laughter, thunder, the rustle of wind through leaves. I memorized them like verses of a forbidden hymn.

Until the day he fell. The sea trembled as he entered. A man, bare-chested, bruised, clinging to driftwood. His skin was kissed by the sun, his hair tangled with salt. He drifted through the Rift like a forgotten prayer.

His eyes were closed, but his lips moved. He was humming my song. Not perfectly. Not purely. But the melody was unmistakably woven with longing, threaded with memory. It was the lullaby I had sung to the coral gardens, the tune I whispered to the moon when no one listened. I circled him, unseen.

My heartbeat like a drumfish, erratic and loud. I should have left. I should have sung him to sleep, as sirens do. That was the law. That was the way. But I didn’t. I hovered just beyond the shimmer, watching the rise and fall of his chest, the way his fingers clutched the wood as if it were a lifeline. His voice cracked, but he kept humming. He was trying to remember me. So, I sang to him instead.

Softly, at first. A single note, like a pearl, dropped into silence. Then another. And another. My voice wrapped around him, like sea foam around stone. His eyes opened. And for a moment, the Rift glowed brighter.

IV. Kael

He awoke. Not with fear, but wonder. His eyes opened slowly, sea-glass green and rimmed with salt. He blinked against the shimmer of Thaloré’s light, and when he saw me, he smiled not as one who sees a monster, but as one who recognizes a dream.

He called me “angel,” though I am no such thing. He reached for me, and I let him. His touch was warm, strange, grounding like driftwood sunbaked and softened by tide. I had never been touched by a creature of flame before. It did not burn. It anchored. His name was Kael.

A sailor-poet, he said, though he had never published a word. He had always felt the sea whispering to him, tugging at his soul like a tide. He told me he had dreamed of me since childhood. That he had heard my song in the wind, in the waves, in the silence between thoughts. “I thought I was mad,” he said, “until I heard you.”

We spoke in fragments of his words, my melodies. He taught me the names of stars: Altair, Vega, Deneb. I taught him the language of whales, the way they mourn and rejoice in the same breath. He told me stories of fire and sky, of lightning that danced and clouds that wept. I told him of the moon’s lullaby, how it hums to the coral when no one is listening.

Each night, I returned. I braided his hair with sea foam and pearl weed. He carved driftwood into coral shapes and left them floating like offerings. We played games with bioluminescent fish, tracing constellations in the water. He sang to me in his rough, broken voice, and I wove harmonies around his words like kelp around stone.

He asked me once, “Are you real?” I pressed my forehead to his and whispered, “Only when you listen.” And the Rift began to close. Its edges are frayed like torn silk. The shimmer dimmed. The currents grew colder. The sea, it seemed, was holding its breath. We did not speak of endings. We only sang louder.

V. The Choice

The Elders knew. Their summons came in the form of a tide shift, sharp, sudden, unmistakable. The Coral Spire loomed like a cathedral of memory, its walls pulsing with ancient song. I entered alone, my tail trailing embers through the water.

They stood in a circle, their eyes like polished stones, their voices like thunder in the deep. “You have crossed,” they said. “You have sung beyond the veil.” “I have felt,” I replied. They did not blink. “The Rift is not a bridge. It is a wound. To bind yourself to the surface is to bleed. If you cross again, fully, if you give your voice to that world, you will lose it. Your song will unravel. You will become silent. Forgotten.”

I bowed my head, but inside, my heart surged like a storm tide. Because Kael was waiting. I returned to the Rift. It was smaller now, flickering like a candle in the wind. The edges frayed, the light dimmed. The passage between our worlds was closing. Kael stood on the other side, soaked in moonlight, arms outstretched. His eyes found mine through the shimmer, and I felt the ache of every unsung note between us. “I don’t want to forget you,” he said, voice trembling. “Then sing with me,” I whispered.

He nodded, and together, we began. It was not a song of words. It was a song of memory. Of coral gardens and starlit sails. Of driftwood carved with care. Of laughter shared in silence. Of longing braided into melody. My voice rose like a current, fluid and fierce. His voice met mine, rough, raw, radiant. We wove a duet of longing and light, of two souls reaching across the wound in the world. The Rift pulsed.

The sea held its breath. The coral dimmed. The whales stilled. Even the moon paused in its arc. And then I let go. I poured my voice into the song, every note a thread of myself. I gave him my melody, my memory, my magic. I crossed not with my body, but with my soul. The rift closed. But the song remained.

VI. The Echo

I returned to Thaloré. The Rift sealed behind me, and Kael was gone. But I changed. My tail shimmered with firelight, a hue no Mer had ever worn. My voice, once gentle and fluid, now carried the weight of two worlds. When I sang, the ocean stirred not in rage, but in remembrance. Storms softened. Grief unraveled. The coral gardens bloomed in colors never seen before: ember-pink, starlight-blue, longing-gold.

The Elders watched in silence. Their eyes, ancient and deep, flickered with something between awe and unease. I had crossed the veil. I had sung with a soul of flame. I had returned not broken, but burning. They did not speak of it. But the sea did.

Whales began to echo my melodies in their migrations. Jellyfish pulsed in rhythm to my breath. Even the moon seemed to linger longer over Thaloré, as if listening. I became a legend. They say I sing to the surface now. That sailors hear my voice in the wind and weep without knowing why.

That children hum my melody in their sleep and dream of glowing reefs and silver-haired girls with ember-tipped tails. Some say I am a warning. Others, a wish. And somewhere, in a realm of air and flame, a sailor writes poems that ripple with ocean rhythm. He carves driftwood into coral shapes. He hums to the tide. He waits. Because once, we sang together. And the sea remembers. It always remembers.