From the Sea: One

Ruth Bagery walked along the beach as she did every day toward the brink of twilight. Ruth was in her late forties, going on fifties, and lived by herself in a house by the water. She never married after a tragic (and yet avoidable) death took her fiancé twenty years earlier. She tried to love again but they were never like her first true love and so, she grew detached from relationships and decided that she would never be able to love another. Ruth knew that she would never have children or husband and settled with herself as a spinster.
As she let the cool breeze from the sea brow through her graying red hair, she thought she saw something lying at the water’s edge in the distance. Thinking it looked like a bag that a careless fisherman probably through overboard, she ignored it and continued on. Sometimes she wanted to just beat the fishermen up for their lack of concern for the environment. Besides, if there were no fish in the water from all the pollution, how were they supposed to make a living?
She made her way closer to the object when she realized that it wasn’t a bag but a body. She ran as fast as she could to it and discovered that it was a little boy about three or four years old. His legs seemed to be wrapped up with something but she couldn’t tell from the oncoming darkness of the night. She grabbed him under the arms and pulled him up the beach, getting on her knees quickly and pulsing her hands over his chest to pump the water from his lungs. She breathed into his mouth and pumped again when he coughed, water coming up from his mouth. Ruth sighed and wrapped her shawl around him, picking him up and taking him into her home up the beach.

Once she was in the house, she set him on the worn out couch and unwrapped the shawl so that she could get to what was binding his legs together. When she pulled the shawl away she stopped and just blinked. His legs looked as if it were the tail of a seahorse. Thinking her routine glass of an alcoholic beverage before her walk on the beach was finally catching up with her, she shook her head and went to find a towel and blanket for him. She found the towel and began to dry the boy off, the strange tail disappearing as she dried him.
Once he was dry, she got to have a good look at him. He couldn’t have been more than three or four with sandy blonde hair and looked very weak. Once he was completely try, she looked at the boy’s pale legs and grabbed the blanket to wrap him up in it. When she turned back around, he was looking at her with shining black eyes. They were like orbs of black glass and almost seemed to cover his whole eyes, hardly any white to be seen.
“Oh… You’re awake…”
The little boy just stared at her for a moment and then closed his eyes again, breathing in deep and falling back into a slumber. Ruth breathed in as well and watched the little boy sleep for a moment. She’d never had a child nor taken care of one for she hadn’t planned on having a child in her house at all. This was all so new to her and besides, she had to see if he belonged to anyone before she could claim him as hers. But do I even want a child? she thought but the more she looked at the little boy she knew that that doubt was just her own doing. She had always wanted kids, dreamed of them actually, and this was her chance to have one.
But should he call her mother or should he call her something else? She was quite old and she felt that when he got older that him calling her mother would only embarrass him. When he would be a teenager, she would be in her late fifties, hitting sixty and children at that age were so sensitive and yet insensitive to that sort of situation. He would be embarrassed to call her mother and he could possibly hurt her feelings by saying so. But she didn’t feel like a grandmother…
Ruth decided to see what would happen tomorrow.

During the night, Ruth felt like someone was watching her and she opened her eyes. She saw two twinkling lights dancing above her and she gasped, jumping up and turning on the light. She found the little boy from the living room looking at her curiously.
“You scared me.” She said softly, rubbing the sleep out of her green eyes. “What is it, sweetheart?”
“Heart…?”
Ruth turned her head and he opened his mouth, pointing.
“Heart.”
“Um… no… Are you hungry?”
The little boy stared at her and then pointed to his open mouth again.
“Hung.”
“Hungry.”
“Hungey.”
“Works for me…”
“Mom.” Ruth looked at him for a moment as he pointed at her. “Mom.”
“Well… Uh…”
The little boy grabbed the magazine that was on her nightstand and pointed to the woman hugging her little boy tightly from the head story. He pointed excitedly at the woman.
“Mooooom.” Then he pointed at Ruth. “Yes.”
Ruth blinked at him but she was at a loss for words. What could she say? She grabbed the magazine and put it on the dresser as the little boy stared at her more.
“Okay…”
“Yes.”
“If that’s what you want…”
“Okay.”
Ruth narrowed her eyes at the boy and realized what was going on.
“You don’t really understand, do you? You’re just repeating words you’ve heard before… You don’t want me to be your mother, sweetie.”
The little boy turned his head ever so slightly.
“Why?”
“Well…”
“Mom, yes.” He said, looking at her as if it were the most logical thing to figure out.
Ruth didn’t understand what was going on but turned the light out and got back into the bed.
“We’ll discuss this in the morning. Go back to sleep.”
“Yes.”
“Yeah…”
She suddenly felt him crawling into her bed and then snuggled next to her under the covers. She looked at him as his eyes sparkled in the night.
“Yes.” He said.
Ruth just went to sleep and decided to decipher the young boy in the morning. For now, he was just a cute little kid.