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Summer at Innsmouth
The gold refinery doesn't run some days. The sun makes the workers sluggish and Old Man Marsh just lets them take off early. It never hurts the refinery--there will always be more work when they are more active.
Younger ones are almost always at Devil's Reef. You can see them off, shouting and splashing. One of them dives down and doesn't come up, but no one seems worried. Midst the shouts, you can hear gurgles and growls.
Sedge grass are abundant, patches of grass grow on the beach, and you can even see tiny purple flowers on the shrubs. Georgian houses are marked with sea spray, and anything iron is rusted quickly. The the sea and fish smell wraps around the town like a mesh net.
The elms in the old gentle part of town shake with leaves, but the proliferation is odd. Some branches are heavy with leaves, while others are bare and blasted.
The women who retained some customs bring cool drinks and sandwiches to their shut-in relatives. The men drink home-brew and do not talk much. You can see they are bald and they don't bother trying to hide it. They wear more the queer gold jewelry of odd curves and filigree no human tribe ever crafted.
The nights are spent inside the old Masonic Hall, when the cracked church bell chimes twelve. Ceremonies are in howling calls and gurgling response. Sometimes they play pipes flat microtones and dissonance, punctured with moments of ruined beauty. No animals go near the town at night.
The shut-ins must suffer the most. They can't close their eyes against sunlight piercing through bordered windows. A little more each day, they can smell the sea more and hear the distant pipings underneath the sea. They paw at windows with webbed hands and moan. They are patient, though.
They will have all the summers they want even when humanity has its winter.
The gold refinery doesn't run some days. The sun makes the workers sluggish and Old Man Marsh just lets them take off early. It never hurts the refinery--there will always be more work when they are more active.
Younger ones are almost always at Devil's Reef. You can see them off, shouting and splashing. One of them dives down and doesn't come up, but no one seems worried. Midst the shouts, you can hear gurgles and growls.
Sedge grass are abundant, patches of grass grow on the beach, and you can even see tiny purple flowers on the shrubs. Georgian houses are marked with sea spray, and anything iron is rusted quickly. The the sea and fish smell wraps around the town like a mesh net.
The elms in the old gentle part of town shake with leaves, but the proliferation is odd. Some branches are heavy with leaves, while others are bare and blasted.
The women who retained some customs bring cool drinks and sandwiches to their shut-in relatives. The men drink home-brew and do not talk much. You can see they are bald and they don't bother trying to hide it. They wear more the queer gold jewelry of odd curves and filigree no human tribe ever crafted.
The nights are spent inside the old Masonic Hall, when the cracked church bell chimes twelve. Ceremonies are in howling calls and gurgling response. Sometimes they play pipes flat microtones and dissonance, punctured with moments of ruined beauty. No animals go near the town at night.
The shut-ins must suffer the most. They can't close their eyes against sunlight piercing through bordered windows. A little more each day, they can smell the sea more and hear the distant pipings underneath the sea. They paw at windows with webbed hands and moan. They are patient, though.
They will have all the summers they want even when humanity has its winter.
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