Chapter One

William Bradford

by William Bradford

Story

I would like to think we would have called it what it was, if we had both been around to see it. To witness the only one of its kind. Yet, we would have fumbled our words as they started to take shape. Up until that point, our language had been a stranger to all of it. Not that we would have had any breath to speak with anyway. The cresting waves tossed their blues and greens and shades of gold onto the sand, some leaping onto rocks, giving birth to foam and froth. Silver schools of fish dart out from beneath, seemingly eager to catch the light. The world had known these familiar games of scales, sand and sea for a long time, but until that evening had not known how to put them into words. Now a force had been sent to reshape everything, from rain to tears, clay to flesh. A force to be reckoned with, one only the most foolish of us would dare to meddle with.

In the very beginning, our great mother Khaos set her children, night and darkness into the world. From their coupling arouse the first dawn to slice the air, and light and day spread their golden wings. They shed their light upon Gaia, whose fruits would number both figuratively and literally. She and Ouranos, the sky, took to each other. Among their offspring was Khronos, who set the wheels of time into motion. He soon grew jealous of his father, who stretched over all he knew. Khronos threw himself into a fit of rage and resolved to uproot his family tree. One fateful morning, he parted Ouranos’ gonads from him and flung them across the sea. These were carried to the island of Cyprus, in a frenzied whirl of semen and salt.

The beach had never taken the role of birthing bed, nor the spume as midwife, but fell completely and utterly into place as she was born into the world. If you could, in fact, call it a birth. One moment the world was devoid of her, the next it was not. And I know she’d put it like that as well. “For what would the world be, what stories would be worth telling, what shape would these very words have, if it weren’t for love?” she would say. Her hair melting into the setting sun, necklaces of seaweed embellishing her damp skin, as she rises from the waves. In her wake, tears would flow in new colors and touch would reach new heights. Finally, we had found a way to describe a vine trailing its path towards the sun or a nightingale’s song taking to the air. All these wonders would be compared to, and in turn, be measured against her. With her, love and beauty took their first steps. My mother, Aphrodite.

© William Bradford 2023-09-11

Genres
Novels & Stories