Pearls

Later:

"I sank my hands in pearls up to the wrists.
The chest, filled near to the top with pearls ready to be assembled into jewelry, overflowed. Pearls scattered across the table top and rolled onto the floor. I dug my hands deeper, rooting down among the cool, heavy spheres. I pulled my cupped hands upward and scooped them out. More spilled and clattered, a rain of beauty.
Seen through glazed, unfocused eyes the pearls were alike, a simple mass of beads.
Seen close and clearly, they were individuals. Some were as tiny as a baby’s tears. Some as large as hummingbird’s eggs. Some glared pure white, some glowed pinkish grey, some shone blue or gold or green. It took a good, loving eye to see each one’s charm alone. It took cool discernment, too, and a hard mind for price to choose what each might do, where each might go.
That would be for tomorrow. Tonight was for glory. Tonight was for dribbling them through my fingers like water. Tonight was scooping them again and again through my cupped hands, splashing them over my naked flesh like handfuls of water, pouring them over my head in a moonlit cascade, letting them run into my mouth in a stream to fill it up and overflow it and run out again, shining over my throat and breasts...
I woke.

The sea surged around the Hyacinth and bobbed her up and down to no avail. We had no wind. We were dying of hunger and thirst and there was no help for it."

See? Now THIS I would keep reading. I just wrote this, but it has no story to go with it.