On the strand, Ariel and Caliban: the former seated atop a milk-white boulder with knees drawn up beneath his chin and wings folded behind him, the air about him stained with a mild prismatic splendor; the latter crouching in the surf with one hand shielding his eyes from the sun and his thick purple tongue grotesquely thrust out before him to taste the spray rising from the softly surging foam. Both are gazing out over the water to the far, glistening green horizon, where the last of the departing ship’s masthead is just now melting away, fading between azure sea and sapphire sky like the last pale flicker of a dying candle’s flame.
Ariel. [Speaking mostly to himself:] I shall miss him, however much I relish the loosing of the . . . gentle bonds his magic held me in . . . even those that constrained my tongue to speak in verse . . .
Caliban. [With a disdainful hiss:] I don’t mourn the loss of my yoke. He wouldn’t have struck it off at all had he not gone. [He lowers his hand and his eyes, then runs two finny fingers thoughtfully along his scaly jaw.] He was cruel; he drove me to my tasks with ten thousand pinches. He didn’t cosset and caress me as he did you.
