Daughter of Void

"Past the village, under sea ice

Haunting the shoreline since days came from nothingness.

Watching you with unblinking eyes

Waiting for you to defy."

The boy observes him before the fire

Ancient tribesman speaking in somber tongue

Fascinated, leaves in the night

Glacial wind bites at his eyes

Words of elders ring in his mind

"Hair of a maiden, skin of a basilisk

Stealing children too brash to comply

Sentencing them to the deep."

"I'll come to you,"

The child calls to ocean depths from the snow

He listens for the humming sound

Wishes for the creature to appear

Splash of water, unrecognizable noise

Vision hazy, still his feet move ahead

Flash of emerald, now a presence inauspicious

Cranes to see, stability compromised

Into the blackness of antarctic sea

Tidal momentum; submerged in her monarchy

From waves, he calls to vacant land

Sinks to the bottom

Upon realization of his breach,they retrace his tracks

A form floating near the polar fronds

Familial collapse

The tribesman lauds the child

And curses the monster living in the waves

Old as the sun

Rising whale with emerald tail

Merely adrift, more beast than myth