His Work Goes On In Silence

[firefly]

The old man pries a rough-shelled creature away from the oxypylon. It's hard and uncooperative, clinging to the dark, metallic surface with vain resolve. When it comes away, its soft insides stretch thin, becoming weak and insubstantial, and its hold on the pylon breaks. It's unceremonious, cold, as if it hadn't been there all along – growing and living and breathing. The old man pokes it into a pouch hanging from his hip.

That's supper sorted.

He straightens and stretches. Tired bones along a curved spine come together under thin muscles, and then reset, curving over again. His bones and sinew have done this dance for as long as the old man could ride a gyrobike, the small, skinny boy with no mother and the atmo-sick father who wouldn't last longer than the First Wave. It wasn't so bad back then, the work. They had come, but the world still had air to breathe and a weightless hope, and he was nimble and strong, at home in the water. It felt like this job was made for him. The pylons sang to him, whispers of siren song, churning the ocean between them – lovingly, possessively. They needed him. They still need him.

He's waist deep in seawater, just metres off the shore in a quiet, sheltered bay. Coalescing above him, clouds roll by with cold indifference. They make the world dull and grey, a perpetual haze obscuring any memories of what it was like before. And still, he raises his face to them, and the diffuse light smoothes the deep lines on his face so that for a brief moment, they might have thought he was just a boy again. Don't look, don't praise them with your eyes, they say. But he does, every day.

They are the life-bringers. The breath-takers.

The pylons moan, and he returns to work. Shell after shell, prying and scraping and pulling their fickle fingers from the sensitive panels that turned the salt water into breathable air. Little, green leaves have grown amongst the array – an undersea answer to a call unheard, by him, and the others. They sprout, but no more, crying for a chance like they way he did long ago. The array stretches out, kilometres of relentless purpose standing upright and resolute in the shallow water. They are little monoliths of unrealised hope, like needles in his skin, refusing to let him forget. Sometimes he cries, soundlessly – alone, tired, and afraid.

He doesn't make a sound. They don't like it.

Let me go, he thinks, but there's no real conviction in his heart.

No, and their whisper is that song. That caress. It scares him, and comforts him.

He's tragically enthralled.

Something tugs on his trousers beneath the water. The thing is back. He doesn't know what it is. It's small, like a lizard, or a fish, or something in between. It bobs its wide, flat head above the water's surface and opens and closes its little mouth. He smiles and bends over, bopping it on its pink head. It rolls over, little legs in the air as it rubs its belly along his finger. Hungry? The creature twists over and wriggles around the pouch. The old man retrieves one and gently separates the flesh from the shell, just a little, the little thing needed to learn.

Soon, there are more, and they get bigger. Now they're strong enough to help pry the smaller shellfish from the pylons. The little leaves grow, too. They seem to like the creatures, and the scraps and waste they provided. Sometimes the old man stands amongst them all and stretches his hands to the indifferent clouds. He sways with the current and the forest and the weird, writhing creatures.

He's lost it; atmo-sick or moonbrained, they say.

Nah, he was born that way.

I heard his da' was sick when they made him, so his brain didn't grow right.

He ignores them, and continues his work with wordless rebuttals by the shape of his back. In the town, they stare and laugh and growl.

Leave him be, he's harmless. An old man at the end of his life.

He's a menace. A traitor. A Them-fucker.

They need the bay for their boats and trawlers. They're starving. But don't they understand that they need the pylons to live? That they're alive? That they need him? They come to the bay and make noise, and he cringes in the shallows as the pylons hiss and the water stings. He wishes they'd all go away. But they don't, their anger and fear are violent and mindless weapons of rebellion. They enter the bay at night, as if they think that the clouds cannot see them there and the young forest at their feet can't feel them, crushing and dying under their boots. The pylons must be destroyed, those machines made by Them. And for the first and last time the bay fills with sound. Glorious, frightful. Unheard by the minds that fired their utterance, dancing between the pylons and over the blankets of sealeaves that hide the creatures from the tender horror acted out in the dark.

It's morning. The bay is red. The old man stands at the edge of the shore and watches the pink waves bathe his feet. Gently, like coaxing kisses, they assure him and guide him, bringing him back in. He bends down and dips his hands below the surface, his daily ritual, a baptisement of the doubts and fears that plagued him in the night. This is right, he knows, and he begins his work again in the restored quiet.

It's been years. More than ten. Or even many tens, he stopped counting days long ago, stopped going home. Stopped eating. He dies there, in the bay, amongst the leaves. It's quiet, as they like it, and the clouds are gone but it's the clear sky now that is indifferent. There is no mourning as his breath expires into the sea, no hesitation when they take him – he belongs to them, his breath, his flesh, his life.

The atmosphere changes after the pylons fail. They leave, discarding the now unviable planet like a spent battery. The humans died off long before the old man who was sustained by the bay and by the bay alone. But, the sea forest grows – great, leathery leaves from the size of a man to the length of cruise ships sway beneath the surface of a renewed ocean, breathing life into the world again. The shellfish, the inflexible and persistent plague upon the pylons, multiply. They are countless, but not unchecked. The creatures feed on them, they know how to pry them off and feast on the soft insides, fertilising the forests, thriving from the invisible hand of the old man. The ghosts of the pylons sing to him, and he sighs on the breath of the forest he's fed.

There is air again, plenty of it. It's so cruel and beautiful and ugly and just. Because, they're all gone now. It's quiet.

And so;

His work goes on in silence.

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The random quote "His work goes on in silence" was provided by the lovely @Jacket, thank you!