The Claim

I had never been to sea before. My adoptive parents would just not allow it. Swim in a river? No problem! But any discussion about visiting sea left them hyperventilating.

It was irony to the max, considering we lived in a seaside town. Also, they had found me abandoned next to the sea when I was a few weeks old. They should be thankful to the sea for the gift…

Or maybe they think they stole me…I sometimes suspected that they feared sending me back, as if the sea would recognise me and claim me as its lost property.

It irked me more often than not to be denied so many times. When all my friends would party on the beach, I, the champion swimmer in school pool, would sit at home watching daily soap reruns. So this time, I didn’t ask. I told them I was staying the night at my friend’s place, which I was. And then, in the morning, I went for a swim in the sea in his borrowed swim trunks.

The beach felt familiar…not the seen-in-a-dream/movie familiar, but intimately familiar–like I knew how it would feel like to touch the water…

How the clear blue water would caress my feet with the velvety soft touch…

How the multi-hued plants under water would be tinged in the green sunlight filtering though the water…

How it would feel to hold starfish or ride a stingray in the moonlit nights…

The clear blue waves beckoned me like a siren’s song and entranced, I walked towards it.

My feet were already waist-deep when I noticed it–the skin on my legs looked weird…

Wrinkled…

Scaly…

Until the fins appeared.

The sea has claimed me as its lost property. For once, it sucks to be right!