It's Still Life

Beyond an Intersection Named After an English King and a Saint
Six Sentence Story: Day 14

Crossing the Mersey (or The One Without Dialogue) 

The River Mersey rolls in scrolls against the hull of the Royal Iris ferry, a watery hush stirring Nick’s thoughts—snippets of memory (he looks up at the metallic-grey sky and watches seagulls circling), their cries haunting the scent of brackish water, or maybe it’s the soulless water that remembers no one; Nick looks down at the water—magical and musical.

The deck comes alive with sounds—there’s a man with a guitar sitting aft, singing, So, ferry cross the Mersey, and always take me there, (I start humming the tune—I’ve forgotten the words).

Nick sways with the ferry’s pitch—tastes the air, brine and diesel, the tang of river-slick iron; he takes in the murmurs of Scouse accents rolling fast and sharp—words splashing like rain, hitting quick and light, consonants dropped, skimming off the surface like water on cobbles; other words stutter like hail, hard and clipped, bouncing from tongue to teeth in a quick, percussive metre.

I shade my eyes in the sun, catching subtle scents that linger grey and green and timelessly old, like ghosts of seaweed sweeping the tide back and forth, and the gentle hum of the ferry’s engine resonates through my bones, while Hünga—sitting between Nick and me—sniffs the air, deciphering one food from another: warm, greasy chips, thick-cut and golden; his tail flicks side to side slowly, nostrils twitching as if solving a mystery only he can smell.

This—taking the ferry across the River Mersey—is something I have always wanted to do, and I smile at the thought: “The journey is more important than the destination,” because right now, it truly is—and from the aft end, the Union Jack flutters—a sound soft and light as shuffling cards.

And Hünga stands, ears pricked, searching for whoever’s singing—“We don’t care what your name is, boy, we’ll never turn you away”—while Bob-the-Hob looks down at us from the captain’s flying bridge, because there’s always somewhere to rise above it all.

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “card”.  Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Images are copyright and not to used without permission, which I willingly give when asked, and when not for commercial use. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2025.