You don’t forget the ones like her. No one does. We call her Netta, but that’s not her name. Her name was lost to the sea, same as her soul.
They say she washed ashore long ago, tangled in that same net she still wears like a veil. Some say she was the daughter of a fisherman, others claim she was a bride bound for a distant port—her ship swallowed by a storm and spat back out alone.
But I’ve seen her. Not just the shape of her, wandering the tide in that tattered gown, but the look in her eyes when she lifts her head: like the ocean is still inside her, full of voices and secrets too old for words.
She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t eat. But sometimes, when the fog rolls in and the lighthouse flickers, she touches the shore with bare feet and finds the ones who are drowning on land. The lost. The broken. The ones who can’t breathe above water anymore.
She kneels, gentle and terrible, and offers them a choice. Some follow her into the waves. Some don’t come back.
Others come back changed. How, exactly, is hard for me to say. There’s just something off about them. Not necessarily worse, just…off.
If they have any memory of where she took them, they refuse to speak of it.
• Subject: Kat Lake
• Paper thickness: 10.3 mil
• Paper weight: 5.57 oz/y² (189 g/m²)
• Giclée printing quality
• Opacity: 94%
• ISO brightness: 104%
• Paper sourced from Japan
You don’t forget the ones like her. No one does. We call her Netta, but that’s not her name. Her name was lost to the sea, same as her soul.
They say she washed ashore long ago, tangled in that same net she still wears like a veil. Some say she was the daughter of a fisherman, others claim she was a bride bound for a distant port—her ship swallowed by a storm and spat back out alone.
But I’ve seen her. Not just the shape of her, wandering the tide in that tattered gown, but the look in her eyes when she lifts her head: like the ocean is still inside her, full of voices and secrets too old for words.
She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t eat. But sometimes, when the fog rolls in and the lighthouse flickers, she touches the shore with bare feet and finds the ones who are drowning on land. The lost. The broken. The ones who can’t breathe above water anymore.
She kneels, gentle and terrible, and offers them a choice. Some follow her into the waves. Some don’t come back.
Others come back changed. How, exactly, is hard for me to say. There’s just something off about them. Not necessarily worse, just…off.
If they have any memory of where she took them, they refuse to speak of it.
• Subject: Kat Lake
• Paper thickness: 10.3 mil
• Paper weight: 5.57 oz/y² (189 g/m²)
• Giclée printing quality
• Opacity: 94%
• ISO brightness: 104%
• Paper sourced from Japan
