The Mariner’s Eternal Vigil

A mariner, with eyes of storm-tossed green,
Once trod these paths where mortal feet have been.
Alaric, named for kings of ash and rue,
Whose heart the sea had tempered, fierce and true.
His hands, though calloused by the cord and spar,
Could trace the stars’ lost language, faint and far.
Yet ‘twas not waves nor constellations’ gleam
That drew his soul from depths of brine and dream—

But Liora, whose voice, like twilight’s sigh,
Could quell the tempest’s roar, the cormorant’s cry.
Her hair, a cascade of the night’s own loom,
Her smile, the rift in sorrow’s bitter gloom.
They met where cliffs concede to yielding sand,
Two shadows fused as fate’s unyielding hand
Twined sea with shore, and flame with quenching air—
A union cursed, yet forged with tender care.

“O swear,” she pled, “by tides that rise and fall,
No storm shall claim you, though the heavens bawl.
Return, though years may gnaw the moon’s pale cheek;
Return, though I may haunt this shore, frail, weak.”
He kissed her brow, where dread and hope collided,
“By every wave, my vow shall be abided.
This locket holds a tress, a vow, a plea—
Its gleam shall guide me home, back unto thee.”

Yet fate, that jester garbed in irony,
Lurked where the horizon kissed the roiling sea.
The morn he sailed, the gulls wheeled low and dire,
Their cries the pitch of some unspoken pyre.
The *Stormcrow*’s hull, though oak and iron-bound,
Groaned as the deep unleashed its hounds unbound.
Black clouds, like Furies, rent the sky asunder,
And thunder roared its verdict, raw with wonder.

For forty nights, the mast did bow and break,
The sails, once proud, now flayed to spectral flake.
Men fell like leaves to Neptune’s ravenous maw,
Their prayers devoured by the whirlpool’s maw.
Alaric, lashed to helm by hope’s frail thread,
Clung to her image as the chaos spread.
“O Liora!” he howled through salt and spray,
“Though Hell’s jaws gape, I’ll cleave to thee alway!”

But gods, it seems, take sport in lovers’ pains—
A wave, colossal, ‘gainst the timbers strains.
The *Stormcrow* splintered, lost to froth and night,
And silence drank the chaos from the fight.
Yet as he sank, the locket’s feeble glow
Pierced through the abyss, a spectral undertow.
“Forgive,” he gasped, to shadows yet unborn,
“Forgive the oath that dies with this last morn.”

Meanwhile, on cliffs where Liora kept her tryst,
The seasons bled, yet still she clenched her fist
Around that locket, cold against her breast,
Its chain a shackle, mocking her unrest.
She hailed each mast that dared the horizon’s rim—
“Is that his sail?”—her hope relentless, grim.
Her voice, once song, now scraped the air like rust,
Her eyes, twin voids where faith decayed to dust.

Years gnawed her youth, yet still she paced the shore,
A wraith enrobed in sorrow’s endless lore.
The village mourned her, whispered of her woe,
Yet feared to breach the tide of “what if?”s flow.
One eve, as winter’s breath iced every stone,
She staggered where the waves and wind had moaned.
“O liar sea!” she shrieked to skies slate-gray,
“You stole his breath—now take this husk away!”

The locket fell, its chain by salt consumed,
As waves embraced the form the storm had doomed.
Her name, a sigh, dissolved in seafoam’s hiss,
Her bones, mere grit in time’s vast abyss.
Yet legends claim that when the tempests wail,
Two phantoms dance where ocean greets the shale—
He, ever seeking; she, forever veiled,
Their tragedy in brine and starbeam paled.

Now voyagers who brave that cursed cove
Beware the figure at the helm, who strove
To keep a vow the Fates had rent asunder,
His voice a dirge that splits the sky with thunder.
And in the village, ruins claim the land,
Its stones mere teeth in time’s unsparing hand.
But love? ‘Tis writ in tides that ne’er forgive—
A mariner’s vigil, endless, while he grieves…