Revelry by the Sea

The waves of the sea, a dance of cycles that never ends. Weary of the harbors that were once places of revelry, the sailors spread out their charts and chose for themselves the end point of the voyage. The compass halted, the needle trembled, pointing toward “Styxia”, the city of eternal revelry standing tall upon the shore, the place where fate would bury their bones. Paying it not the slightest mind, those who had not yet known death raised sail in their drunkenness and stepped joyfully onto the dance floor of Phasegousa.

The sailors followed the rhythm of the tide and the shape of the moon, drove bone forks into the spines of whales, split ancient drifting ice with the prows of their ships, and sang aloud along the way... Until they sank into the fog, until the lighthouse stood right before their eyes, until at last they struck the reef...

The stranded ship sank to the bottom of the water, and the immortals came back to life out of the waves. The sailor stood up upon the crag, his body covered with seaweed and stains of salt. The revelers within the lighthouse had waited a long while, and they bowed to invite him to join the endless feast. They walked to the music along the long breakwater and climbed the white lighthouse among the reef islands. The lighthouse of Styxia burns whale oil, and its cold flame dances and wraps a lens carved from crystal. The lighthouse itself is a colossal Water Lyre, and as the guests climb it they can see glass tubes drawing in seawater through the gaps in the brick and stone, rising and falling with the waves. Upon the terrace, the revelers joined hands and danced around the fire to the music, and the fire cast their shadows onto the distant surface of the sea. There, the sailor saw the end point he had dreamed of, that city of everlasting joy.

Those were the years when decay had not yet come down, when suffering, sorrow, and death were still in the womb. Styxia bathed in the indulgence of Phasegousa, embraced by bays like a pair of arms, sung to with lullabies as gentle as a dream.

The impatient sailor's lips trembled. Before him, the revelers invited him to set foot in the city-state and share boundless joy like blood brothers. And behind him, the grey sea stretched vast and endless. Among the reefs strewn with the wrecks of ships, the drowned floated within the waves, their flesh covered over with sea anemones and coral. He remembered the moment he fell into the water, when the undertow dragged him down to a seabed deep and without hope... The cold hand of a Siren brushed across his cheek, and amid a faint, indistinct song he woke, pushed up to a surface glittering with light.

It was only a moment's hesitation, only long enough to leave behind one fleeting glance, and the door leading to happiness had closed. The revelers smiled and refused the sailor's request to enter Styxia, only because he had just woken from his drunkenness, and had not yet learned how to receive true joy.

The lonely sailor, like the travelers before him, wandered between the sea and the city-state, halting at the threshold of the mortal world and of joy. He wiped away the oil flowing from the wound of a stranded whale, lit the lighthouse when night fell, then sat down before the lamp and plucked upon the Water Lyre melodies that had never been played.

The lighthouse rang out with the notes, and all of Styxia sank into the music. Those melodies, now flowing, now urgent, awakened endless dreams of pleasure within the heart of the Queen of Styxia. The sailor played the piece in reverse from the final note, making the melody witty and cheerful. And so a white boat carrying variety performers glided lightly along the river. Beautifully dressed young men and women crowded both banks, and behind a gilded mask decorated with feathers that hid her face, the Queen mingled into the crowd as well, steeping herself in the fragrance of lilac and almond.

The sailor adjusted the rhythm, making the notes hurried and fiery. And so, in a play that took the whole city-state as its stage, the crowd played at being pirates, waving black flags to seize walls that had never been defended, plundering fine wine and gold and silver, hanging the nobility upon gallows covered in flowers, and then setting the crown upon the heads of the beggars in the city. At the moment the curtain fell, they set the tower ablaze, then danced wildly to the music, and drank themselves senseless.

Surging waves soaked the sheet music and blurred the soft, flowing notes. The Queen entered a new play within the fog before the lighthouse, wearing a blue mermaid's tail dress, transformed into an attendant of Phasegousa... the Queen of the Sirens.

In the story, the Sirens are charged with enduring immeasurable suffering at the bottom of the deep sea, using their own flesh and blood to draw dark calamity into the Overflowing Chalice, in exchange for the eternal joy of Styxia. At the promised hour, the Sirens will at last follow the light and the sound of the lighthouse, and walk along the breakwater into Styxia. The people of Styxia will take their hands, and together they will join the feast that never ends.

The Queen of Styxia stepped down into the water and enjoyed one death of the imagination. On a new moon night when the raging waves could not be restrained, deep beneath the open sea, the hollow tears of the Sirens rose up like foam. They longed, they waited, they gazed for a moonlight they had never seen, and then their flesh dissolved away. Sadly, there was no moonlight tonight, only the lighthouse blinking as it always did... The tears rose in place of the Sirens to the glittering surface of the sea, and the foam drifted and dissolved into the waves.

In the end, the lonely sailor obtained what he had wished for. The revelers wept tears of happiness and congratulated him on setting foot in Styxia. And when the first song of celebration rang out, the withered wings of death had already covered over this city-state of everlasting joy.