A Kingdom By The Sea

A chill barrels over the land with bare teeth and icy jaws. Sand glistens under the moon’s cold smile that glowers menacingly through a wispy curtain of cloud. The vast expanse of ocean beneath the sky swirls like liquid night about the humble island upon which I stand. Relentlessly, waves mercilessly hurl themselves upon jagged rocks that fiercely guard the lonely island and the solemn stone structure upon it; the only thing that seldom breaks the emptiness in my solitary surroundings. What debris are left of the long-abandoned remains now barely stand, marred with age, spattered by the vicious, churning waves and mottled with fractures and scars inflicted by vengeful storms. The crumbling ruin before me may have once been a castle previously central to a prosperous kingdom of a time long ago. This place in time has become captured by the spell of the seas enchantment and fallen victim to its cutting waves that claim the reign of this perished empire as their own.  Alas the only indication that it has ever existed are weathered, disintegrating stone walls and a decaying towering spire that hopelessly claws its way to the belly of the night sky above. A chilling and killing wind laments its mournful ode to what has become a forgotten kingdom. I too, like the desolate remnants of this lost kingdom am a shadow of what has been and what will never be again. For shadows nights are the longest, for it is all we ever see, we fade with the rising of the sun; when golden light sears the horizon, and return only when silver moonlight drips through pale cloud and pools upon frozen earth. Radiantly the moon casts its pearly aura over this sepulchre of solitude and silence, it is tossed like a ghostly galleon upon a sea of shining stars that are entwined in a labyrinthine tangle of glittering constellations, lacing together as one to tell stories that are centuries old and yet immortalised through their frosted flames. I regard the eastern horizon gravely; it is at present the night’s darkest hour, the hour before dawn. Soon the darkness will grow weary and follow the lengthening shadows over the western horizon and vanish from sight. The argent moon and stars will recoil from tendrils of ashen shadow that snake their way across the horizon and chase them behind the infinite skyline. The oceans depths will burn darkly with the dying embers of smouldering night and the dimming fires of the moon and stars that fall silently away into the sea. For now, I recall that the moon beams whilst bringing me dreams of a kingdom where I used to be, neither the angels of heaven above nor the demons under the sea can ever dissever my soul from memories of such a place and a love that was more that love, for I am Annabel Lee.