Wreck

I watched her drown. There was little else to do. She broke the surface, splintered and sunk. It was a driving rain of wood and rivets cascading to the ocean floor. I saw lanterns extinguish as the pressure cracked the glass. I saw men burst from her belly fighting, then limply fall. I heard their voices finish in their throats. Their hearts stop.
And then the melancholy drift, down. Darkness swallowed all of them, and her, whole.
I could have saved a soul. But I was caught in the net of disaster. I could only watch dumbly, adrift in the current, safe in its strength. Had I swum closer, I too would have been pinned in the wreckage. And I've had my fair share of hurt and of saving, and of failing to save. Some will continue to smudge their black marks across my belly for that. Blame is the poison, and rage is the cure. Their vehemence so acidic that I can taste it in my mouth. And so I choose to swim separate.
I saw those men, their boot buckles flashing in shafts of lightning, clutching their rum bottles and silver plates til they lost their breath and their grip. I am one, and they were many, and I am slow. And the sea steals her men so quickly. She's such a hungry whore when the storms break over her head. They ignite the appetite of her entire being for bloody murder. She hears no one when she's locked in that desire. And those who die hear nothing but her rushing through them in their final terrifying moments.
That is how she stole him.
Brute force. A feast on a fragile spirit.
He had come to find me. Returning home from the great wars in the Atlantic. Bearing a spear in the side and lacerations, his skin sheared off in great welts. He had heard me. He always heard me. Mid battle with a tribe, full flight fathoms below. Tearing through dark and through the bodies of enemies. I'd merely cried out as I wept with loneliness. It was the child in me, come to break my back and banish me to the deepest blue. I was selfish to want him there. But he is my twin, my protector and had protected me much. He would never fail me. And I wanted him home, safe.
It took three days for him to return. He hugged the depths. It was almost daylight when he began his ascent. And there was a storm mounting above - a swirling mire, shooting sparks. It was gathering its strength with every mile, charged and vengeful. Someone had done some hideous wrong and there was a debt to be paid. Some sacrifice of flesh to be made. I could hear him now. The sluicing and exhale, though he was labored - so much so I almost didn't recognise him. I stopped still in the half light, stopped breathing to hear.
Lightning struck the surface. Lit up his face. Then the tide turned.
She was dealing her hand.
His full shape appeared in the dark in the briefest of moments - illuminated in the electricity.
I took in little more than his wounds and the silver flash of his eyes. In a raging, rolling wall of swell, he was swept upwards and churned over my head. I too was nearly knocked senseless and fought with every ounce of my strength in the wash, blinded by bubbles of air, kelp wrapping around my neck and filling my mouth. I screamed for her to stop but I was pulled into the forest. Down there she held me close. Through the leathered tendrils I watched him come apart. Far off in some horrific nightmare. Acres in between here and there. But the smell of his blood was as real as the sound of him in pain, ricocheting from surface to sand.
Until the echoes stopped and there was nothing more from him.
Just her. Screaming for her kill. Banshee murderess with bloodied talons.
And his name scraping my throat raw and wracking my chest.

Yes, I watched the wreck sink.
All I could see was him.
And now both have been lost to her.