What Happened to Eliza Jane
As much as the town was willing to turn the tourists to the sea, it was even more willing to turn it’s own out who didn’t fit in quite right. It was never officially decided that Eliza was this month’s offering but when she started talking of leaving Nullmire, her fate was sealed. People don’t leave. If they do it’s cause they fought their way out, tooth and nail. They couldn’t let Eliza leave, it would disgrace the town for the mayor’s daughter to leave, especially since she hated the town so much, they couldn’t let her poison the world to their small town. You thought an elder god hovering over your town like a swarm of flies and the scent of rot was scary- you’ve never gotten a bad review on yelp.
So they turned the disappearance of Eliza Layne into a positive. Send her out to sea, she’ll still be alive. She’ll still be in Nullmire technically speaking. She’d never go and tell the world all of Nullmire’s secrets. And the town would continue to flourish. Continue to grasp at straws trying to regain what it lost. The fish would come back, that's what the thing at the bottom of the sea had told them. The beaches would turn soft and white and the kelp would stop strangling the ocean till it turned black- just choke it enough to be blue and beautiful again.
You find Eliza on the beach, she’s barefoot on the gravelly sand and wearing only a nightgown, and aside from the obvious something about her is off. It’s almost like the saturation has been turned up, or maybe the contrast. She stands out against the black ocean in a way that seems like she was cut and pasted there.
She turns to you and smiles. Her eyes are the first thing you notice, they’re larger, uncanny even in the way her face has stretched to fit them, twinkling with too many colors, some you can’t even name, and she’s crying. Or rather not so much crying as much as the ocean itself is falling from her eyes, pooling in an almost glow-in-the-dark-jelly like way around her feet, holding starfish and kelp and creatures never meant to see the light of day. Her hair and dress swim around her like she’s already under water, and when she contorts her smiling mouth into the shapes you need to talk, the ocean falls from her throat, jellyfish, and sea urchins, and terrible strands of kelp.
Y'see Old Gods can’t just be killed off for some extra gold. You can’t just off one, collect some reward and move onto the next one. The sickness is deeper than a monster at the bottom of the ocean. You can kill the locals running the show, you can stop the town from trapping tourists, and letting the sea take them away. But the Old God of the Sea is still residing at the bottom of the Ocean, and he’s probably not going away anytime soon. You can’t kill something as old as the world, the only way for a god to die is to not really give a damn if it’s real.
So Eliza goes to the sea because what else can she do. She can’t stay on land, she’s not built for that anymore, family’s a sinkhole and a poison, and you can’t stop her. Her head dips beneath the waves and that’s all you can do. She wanted to leave, so her family and those trying to control fate and life and such decided if they couldn’t have her, the rest of the world couldn’t either. It was better to send her to the sea, the get rid of her, make her do something useful rather than have her go off into the world and do Gods know what. The sun rises as the waves crest over her head leaving only sea foam.
The next day the skies are clear. The next day the fishing haul is good. The next day begins and in the distance you hear the tell-tale 6AM bell toll.
© Isabella Hansen. All Rights Reserved.
So they turned the disappearance of Eliza Layne into a positive. Send her out to sea, she’ll still be alive. She’ll still be in Nullmire technically speaking. She’d never go and tell the world all of Nullmire’s secrets. And the town would continue to flourish. Continue to grasp at straws trying to regain what it lost. The fish would come back, that's what the thing at the bottom of the sea had told them. The beaches would turn soft and white and the kelp would stop strangling the ocean till it turned black- just choke it enough to be blue and beautiful again.
You find Eliza on the beach, she’s barefoot on the gravelly sand and wearing only a nightgown, and aside from the obvious something about her is off. It’s almost like the saturation has been turned up, or maybe the contrast. She stands out against the black ocean in a way that seems like she was cut and pasted there.
She turns to you and smiles. Her eyes are the first thing you notice, they’re larger, uncanny even in the way her face has stretched to fit them, twinkling with too many colors, some you can’t even name, and she’s crying. Or rather not so much crying as much as the ocean itself is falling from her eyes, pooling in an almost glow-in-the-dark-jelly like way around her feet, holding starfish and kelp and creatures never meant to see the light of day. Her hair and dress swim around her like she’s already under water, and when she contorts her smiling mouth into the shapes you need to talk, the ocean falls from her throat, jellyfish, and sea urchins, and terrible strands of kelp.
Y'see Old Gods can’t just be killed off for some extra gold. You can’t just off one, collect some reward and move onto the next one. The sickness is deeper than a monster at the bottom of the ocean. You can kill the locals running the show, you can stop the town from trapping tourists, and letting the sea take them away. But the Old God of the Sea is still residing at the bottom of the Ocean, and he’s probably not going away anytime soon. You can’t kill something as old as the world, the only way for a god to die is to not really give a damn if it’s real.
So Eliza goes to the sea because what else can she do. She can’t stay on land, she’s not built for that anymore, family’s a sinkhole and a poison, and you can’t stop her. Her head dips beneath the waves and that’s all you can do. She wanted to leave, so her family and those trying to control fate and life and such decided if they couldn’t have her, the rest of the world couldn’t either. It was better to send her to the sea, the get rid of her, make her do something useful rather than have her go off into the world and do Gods know what. The sun rises as the waves crest over her head leaving only sea foam.
The next day the skies are clear. The next day the fishing haul is good. The next day begins and in the distance you hear the tell-tale 6AM bell toll.
© Isabella Hansen. All Rights Reserved.