- 437 words
- 1 min 45 sec reading time
I am Sidhe*. I am Eternal.
We choose to live as non-Eternals for seventy years lest we forget.
It is the day of my transformation. Today, it will begin and end. For seventy years, I have looked through their eyes and listened through their ears. My waiting started on the day of my birth—a new century to watch and understand.
Today on the beach, I lift a stone, the same one I have raised every day for a year, same place, same time. Honouring what is gone and what is yet to come. Understanding the same, the different, a day, the day, moving forward and standing still. Seventy birthdays in this body, I am sad to leave but grateful for the understanding it has brought me. Choosing the path of my transition is always hard, leaving behind everything.
I understand the transformation and carry forward every love.
I have chosen to swim with jellyfish; they have listened, and an incredible bloom awaits me. We Eternals vibrate with the world. We are all one. Nearby, grey jagged-edged rocks circle a turquoise sea forming a natural pool at their centre. Into this, I will dive. The bloom will swarm to my point of entry. I will feel a vast, consuming loss. And once again, I will be whole. It is my destiny.
As my final moments approach, I become silent, an observer. I question my conviction and wonder if this path is still the way. My belief shatters into a billion pieces, outnumbering the grains of sand on the beach below my feet. I lay down, curling into a foetal position, weeping silent tears—followed by howls emanating from the centre of my being. My breaths rise in waves, and my body tenses before forcibly evicting all the emotion from my form, leaving behind a brief moment of lightness.
A moment is all I need. Steadily I walk to the rock pool, look towards the jellyfish bloom and dive in.
From this point, my transformation moves quickly. Tentacles wrap around my limbs and sting my body. I remain still and silent, sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Waves sway above me. My eyes open for the final time. Shards of yellow light refract in the water, sear my eyes, and everything goes black. I end. The jellyfish embracing my limp-giving body float me to the surface.
My transformation is complete. I no longer hear the non-Eternals: I see my people, no voices, no truths or untruths, no stories to hide the broken.
I am here. I am now. I am an Eternal. My destiny is transformation. I am Sidhe.
* Sidhe – the fairy people of Irish folklore, said to live beneath the hills and often identified as the remnant of the ancient Tuatha Dé Danann.
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