The moonlight was thin, filtered through a haze that turned the lake into a sheet of hammered obsidian. I sat there, a dark monument of velvet and lace, feeling the cool dampness of the sand beginning to seep through my layers. My skirt—a heavy, midnight-black expanse of velvet—had pooled around my hips in a soft, undulating mound that shimmered faintly with every shift of the wind.
In the silence, punctuated only by the rhythmic pulse of the water, I felt like a gothic gargoyle retired to the coast. That was until the visitor arrived.
The Arrival from the Void
He appeared first as a ripple in the darkness, a shadow detaching itself from the void of the lake. A large cormorant, sleek and dripping, paddled onto the shore with the confident, slightly awkward gait of a creature that owned the night.
I held my breath, my hand frozen halfway through a mental critique of my smudged eyeliner. He didn’t hesitate. With a series of soft, rhythmic thumps, he approached and tucked himself firmly against the plush curve of my velvet-clad hip.
A Case of Mistaken Identity
In that moment, I wasn’t a human in an expensive, sand-ruined outfit; I was the Apex Cormorant. To his avian eyes, the silhouette of my gathered skirt must have looked like:
The ultimate nesting site.
The most majestic, waterproof mate in the hemisphere.
A soft, dark mountain of safety.
He let out a series of low, contented burbles—sounds that vibrated through the velvet and against my skin. I reached out, my fingers trembling slightly, and began to stroke the damp, coarse feathers of his back. He leaned into the touch, closing his eyes against the night air.
The Gothic Dilemma
As we sat in our strange, interspecies embrace, a thought began to gnaw at the edges of my enchantment. I fumbled for my phone, hoping for a sliver of signal to consult the oracle of the internet.
Internal Monologue: “Are cormorant beaks designed for fish, or for the tender cheek of a goth who has lived too long in a fantasy? If I move, does our love turn into a crime scene?”
The bars on my phone remained at a stubborn zero. I was alone with my prehistoric suitor, locked in a lie of velvet and vanity.
The Parting
Eventually, the spell began to fray. The bird shifted, perhaps sensing that his “Amazonian Queen” lacked the necessary fishy scent of a true companion. He stood up, shook his wings—spraying a fine mist of lake water over my face—and gave one last, inquisitive chirp.
He didn’t attack. He simply turned back toward the water, his silhouette merging once more with the black glass of the lake. I stood up, shaking the sand from my heavy skirts, feeling strangely rejected yet profoundly blessed. I walked back toward the city lights, a fairytale princess of the dark, leaving behind the only creature who ever truly appreciated my choice in fabric.
