And the Sea Remembered || Fralice
In her absence, the other side of the bed always felt like a foreign country; an icy tundra, barren land inlaid with crags and ridges, vacant earth and cold to the touch. His fingers scarcely dared to tread there, to disturb the settled snowfall of the empty sheet and its soft creases. Although it was the turn of spring, and the days had begun to stretch further and the sun to linger, brighter, in her absence he truly felt a chill; no longer was his skin warmed by hers, no longer could he trace petals on her shoulder blade and hold onto his anchor as he plunged into the murky waters of sleep. Without her there, his anchor, all that remained was an iceberg.
Frank did not pass the night peacefully, seeming almost fitful in his sleep. As usual, he dreamt of disintegrating in some form: his usual nightmare, of sinking through the forest floor and dissolving in the soil, had shifted to one of him fizzing out as foam in a choppy sea. It ended with the faces of the Death Eaters in whom he’d once confided, with whom he’d once laughed, danced, passed away hours. It always ended this way: there was no other ending to his dreams besides their faces, bleeding black liquid from eyes without pupils.
It took little to rouse him, therefore, just before the dawn: he’d missed the sunrise so often, lately, that it was beginning to disqualify as a custom. Frank had built his stability, his peace of mind in the Port, on habit, on routine. He was beginning to slip away.
But the sun would still rise, and his wife would still move and breathe with him no matter which fragments were splintering. Indeed, he wondered with a familiar knot in his stomach where Alice was, as he slowly dressed and wrapped a scarf about his neck, passing quietly through the cottage and not seeing her returned.
Frank told himself that perhaps Moody had needed her to stay on, with nothing to be concerned about: he told himself this again and again as he beat out his regular path to the bluffs, hoping at every turn to spot Alice approaching from the opposite way. But he only spotted her once he’d almost arrived, and, hastening significantly in his pace, he reached her just as the sun broke loose over the horizon.
He passed a hand over her shoulder blades as he greeted her, one of their wordless I love yous, before checking the coolness of her neck with the back of his fingers. “Good morning,” he smiled, at once released from the lingering trauma of his sleepless visions at the sight of her cheeks. Then he looked along the shore, spotting only Emmeline there. No emergency; nothing to be concerned about. Frank touched his woollen scarf questioningly, offering it through his glance. “Are you warm enough?”
She didn’t see him approaching so much as she felt him draw close. The air changed when she knew Frank was near. She leaned, almost imperceptibly, into the motion of his hand on her shoulders; they gravitated toward each other as naturally as the waves enveloped the sand, flowing again and again despite the efforts of the tide to pull them apart. Like the shore, Frank and Alice had their cycles: they fell in and out of each other with inconsistent regularity.
Alice had never been one for predictability or routine. That was Frank’s comfort, his standard of normalcy. She would set routines, follow routines, settle easily into Frank’s schedule, but she would never set a pattern for him to follow. Having been together for so long, though, she was aware of his need for the predictable, and when Frank went lax on his routines, she automatically reinstated them. If he would not wake up to greet the sun on his own, she would take him there for the sun to greet him.
By way of answer, in place of words because Frank had never needed her words, Alice adjusted the scarf around his neck, ensuring that it was tucked properly into his sweater to prevent a draft. Her Frank wore cardigans in the summers and scarves whenever the wind blew too hard. Alice had spent too many of her summers rolling through the hills of Ireland through pelting rain and bitter wind with Aisling, grass cutting her bare legs, to feel the chill now. Her clothes here were roughly made but thick, and the hours of walking the perimeter had warmed her blood already.
Alice twined her fingers in Frank’s and studied the dark circles under his eyes, thrown into deep shadows as the sun lit his face. It did not take sleeping in his bed to know that he was having nightmares again.
