Uncontrolled Currents

The salt spray, once a comfort, now felt like a lash against my skin. It mirrored the storm raging inside me, a tempest of grief and something else… something wild and untamed that clawed at my insides. Grandad E was gone. The words themselves were a physical ache, a hollow space where his laughter and the warm rumble of his cello used to reside. The library was silent, the music shop a tomb of forgotten melodies. Every note of every song felt like a betrayal, a reminder of a world that had irrevocably fractured.

My powers, if you could even call them that yet, were a cruel joke. They surged and receded with the tide of my sorrow, unpredictable and terrifying. A flash of anger at the unfairness of it all would send ripples of unease through the small fishing boats bobbing in the harbor. A wave of despair would pull the mist down from the sea, thick and suffocating, making it impossible to see even a few feet ahead. The ocean, my lifelong companion, had become a capricious beast, responding to my every tremor of emotion.

One afternoon, the grief was a lead weight in my chest. I sat on the weathered planks of the old pier, my feet dangling just above the churning grey water. The air was heavy, the sky a bruised purple. I remembered Grandad E teaching me to skip stones here, his calloused fingers guiding mine, his voice a low hum against the crash of the waves. Now, the sound of the waves was a mournful dirge, each swell a sob. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to conjure his smile, the crinkles around his eyes when he laughed. Instead, a jolt, sharp and electric, shot through me. The water below, usually a murky green, began to glow with an eerie, phosphorescent light. It pulsed, a sickly, unnatural luminescence, and I recoiled, my heart hammering against my ribs.