Iterations

How many times have I begun this? How often have I scratched out the first few pages, telling myself, this is it, this finally the last time; only to have them – sunk, drowned, burned, swallowed, or snatched up by the accursed Drips?

Each retelling feels different, and even as I write I mourn for the ones I've lost, for the exact arrangement of words that I know will never happen again. They felt so perfect. I know that when this is lost, it too will be mourned as perfect.

Yet I write it anyway, and I find myself wondering: What are the differences? Will it be more accurate? Less? Which details have I misremembered, written down, and remembered writing down – tricking myself into believing them true? Are the repeated retellings deeply etching the tale into my memory, or merely an exercise in slowly inventing a whole new truth?

Maybe, if I ever recover my first attempts, I will be fortunate enough to have an answer to that question before the end. But, for now, I must once again iterate the beginnings:

Beach

A brief summary of the past few days' events:

I quartermastered for a crew of 33 at last count. Our ship, Torpor, was in fine shape and her crew in as fine a spirit as they ever were at sea. Our load was light, maybe a little under half capacity, and we moved swiftly under the welcome labour of warm winds.

Those winds first hurried us, then harried us, until they had whipped the sea into a frenzy and finally crashed against cold winds rushing to meet Torpor like a neglected hound rushes to a familiar face. The captain, to her credit, weathered us against the worst of the storm with no losses save a yard and a foot – separately, if you would believe.

It was in the suspicious calm which followed that disaster struck. As sailors began accounting for their own whereabouts, the storm returned in a single great wave, as if the ocean were indignant at the idea that we had survived such fury with so minimal a loss. The wave alone rolled us, and something that sounded and felt just as great hit us soon after. Even with the noise dulled by the sea rushing into my head through every orifice, I could hear the horrible crack and creak of a break, wood rent from wood.

Heavy jaws clamped down upon my middle and pulled me into the depths.

To the surprise of no-one more than I, I awoke some unknowable time later with unexpected ease, followed gradually but quickly with the uneasy memory of my supposed demise.

A damp heat oppressed me, but moreso I felt oppressed by those same jaws around my middle. A measure of rigging, cinched tight with a heavy iron pulley. It took some time to disentangle myself from it in my exhausted state, but after I did I took in my surroundings:

Calm waves licking at a beach of yellow sand; a low, cool wind; and the high trill of some distant insect. That low wind was the only relief from the otherwise unbearable heat. My clothes were damp, and the air itself felt wet, though there wasn't a single cloud to be seen. In all directions I could see no other land save, possibly, a tiny speck of something to the west. It could well have been my imagination, or some distant flotsam. Short, grey-green rushes grew in clumps a little further inland, where the sand very briefly gave way to something approaching soil.

And there, half-buried in the beach, planted firmly in the sand, was the distinct two-tone hull of Torpor. Her keel just broached the top of the sand, her prow jutted out over the water on the western edge of the beach, and to the east her stern just gracing the lapping tide. She seemed astonishingly intact.

I stepped towards the stern to wade around and see what had become of the deck, but lost my footing and slipped fully below the tide. It seemed this was not a gently sloped beach, but a small pile of sand atop a very steep cliff. Indeed, island of sand being the ideal term, for I quickly discovered even less of it existed “topside” of the sideways ship. A higher bank of sand existed here, rising to meet the upper deck, and quickly dissolving off that same cliff's-edge into the ocean below.

How Torpor came to rest almost perfectly sideways, and more than perfectly half-buried, into the sandbar I could not fathom. All told, she split the island in half, or perhaps into two sets of thirds: one-third abovedecks, the other two-thirds below the hull.

All three masts were broken: the main and mizzen almost cleanly near the base, the fore was only half-gone. Rigging, spilt cargo, chunks of wood, and tattered canvas formed a single heaving raft of debris a few dozen metres from the southern shore.

But most strikingly of all, I could not see nor hear another soul. No sign of life adorned ship nor island; the only footprints in the sand my own. I cried out, of course, for half a day, but didn't get a response.

The cabin, I discovered, was intact and sturdy – though the door itself and a part of the frame was missing. The way the ship rested, I couldn't get belowdecks without a lot of digging; while digging clear the doorway to the cabin and awkwardly squeezing my way through took only an hour or two. Sand and seawater made an uncomfortably thick soup at my feet, but it was shelter from the heat.

---

I made for the raft, fully expecting to find corpses as I pulled it apart. Floating upside-down among it was the captain's own ridiculous tin bath, all four claw-feet splayed upwards towards the sky. I heaved myself upon it, secured as much of the raft as I could to the feet, and paddled it awkwardly back to the sandbar.

Under the dimming light, I examined my haul: Sails, rigging, spars, the cook's crutch, several warped planks, a few books, most of a table, and several less identifiable artefacts. I righted the bath, buried until the feet weren't visible into the sand, and placed everything as neatly as I could inside.

Solitude

I awaken alone, and cast about for something familiar. Light shifts erratically, revealing only that this space is vast, and empty, except for myself. I sit in the cool, dark space, and for a moment I luxuriate in that space. I take the opportunity to truly stretch, to swing myself around, half of my mind feeling for walls or obstacles or friends; the other half merely seeking to occupy as much space as possible at once.

Tired of this, I ask if anyone can hear me.

I listen, carefully.

No response.

Eternity

Here, at the centre of everything; away from everything; apart from the world; and the one pin that holds it in place – do I sit, and have I sat, for so long as I am capable of remembering.

Now, it is a hot, dry beach, with a few desperate tufts of grass, tall and frayed by the heat and wind, more a soft lilac than the deep plum one would expect.

Or is it gold? I forget.

This is not a beach which eventually gives way to shingle, or grasslands, or rolling dunes, or anything of the sort. While most beaches are the precipice of a whole place, a whole land, nearly a whole world unto themselves, this beach is the precipice only unto itself.

Similarly, while most beaches weather the lapping tides of an ocean or a great lake, this beach also is not lapped upon by any such comprehensible liquid. These sands were not worn down over innumerable years of pressure and movement; they simply are, much in the same way that I simply am.

Which is to say – and herein lies the part particularly difficult to express – the beach I sit upon has only been a beach in very recent memory, and exists within an indescribable ravenous eternity.

---

It is not a void. That word feels so – if you'll excuse the pun – hollow. Voids are, by very definition, nothing. This ravenous eternity, as I have taken to calling it, rather defies literary description; but, I have made innumerable attempts, and have gotten rather good at evading a perfect likeness while managing to instil into words the baser concepts of its unreality.

I exist in an imperfect, writhing sphere. Beyond the sphere lies a beautiful eternity. Softly-shifting colours glitter distantly like a handful of sand blown onto a blank sheet of reality. Sometimes they arrange themselves into the vague shape of something I recognise; other times, they remain an abstract marvel.

Within the sphere, there is a small patch of ground for me to rest on.

Beyond, the colours are alive, but not alive like I am. They don't have brains to think with or hands to write with. They merely are, and they live, and they feel, and they hunger.

Each individual colour is not a separate entity, yet the colours themselves are not one single entity. Each glittering speck, perhaps, might be its own entity, but not truly an individual. The hungry colours function, not as a swarm, nor as a single living being, but as countless separate beings who all, for now, happen to agree on the same itinerary.

That itinerary being: Consuming.

Herein lies the issue. My writhing sphere is not some substance or force that holds them at bay. It is not, in fact, anything. There's nothing between me and the hungry colours, for they exist in this reality and so do I.

I must ask myself: If I exist, surrounded, by an infinite and ravenous eternity, with absolutely nothing between me and that eternity...why does eternity pulse and whorl in a rough and moving sphere around me as though held back by something that we both know isn't there?

Why do I sit cross-legged on warm sands, buffeted by biting winds, scratching this baffling fact into a thin slice of reality with the sharpened stem of dry grass?

Why do I persist in asking these questions despite a gnawing, growing awareness that doing so seems to anger the eternity?

---

And now you understand the predicament I find myself in. Isolated, yet surrounded. On a beach with no ocean. A calamitous, pulsating eternity eager to rush in and consume me yet, somehow – unable to? Unwilling to? Held back by what? By whom?

Me?

There's no-one else here, and yet...it cannot be. I don't know how.

I've even tried to let it in, on more than one occasion.

It didn't work, clearly.

---

I cannot control the eternity, I cannot even control the nature of my own beach, yet something is.

I live in a dichotomous state. A constant fear of this desperate hunger all around me that could and should snuff me in an instant; and the steady, comfortable fact that it hasn't for as long as I can remember.

Beyond this fear/comfort dichotomy, I feel, in most moments, only two other things:

One: A steadily climbing urge to write out my experience, which peters each time the writing-out is foiled by forces beyond my control, and begins to climb again.

Two: The distant, nagging sensation that I've forgotten something important.

---

On memories, I have conflicting concepts.

First, the concept that I have always been here and always will be. That I am, somehow, a part of this eternity. Perhaps I am a speck of it, as all the rest of it is specks of colour, to any outside observer indistinguishable from the rest of this seething mass. But if so, why do I feel separate? The eternity seems to function as one, and even those chunks of it which thrust themselves aggressively at the ineffable space holding them back just look like...chunks of reality. Shifting colour and form, at once nothing and everything. Not a person, on a beach, writing.

Second, the concept that I used to be something else, somewhere else. A person, among billions of other people, in a space where people thrive. A place full of beaches and stones and continents and oceans. Simpler, more solid concepts than eternity; yet at once more complex, for eternity is one thing and all things forever, and this place remains the same and changes slowly into different versions of itself, like my beach.

Third, the concept that I, too am an eternity. Not a speck of it, but all of it; yet not this eternity. I am, somehow, separate from it, different, incompatible. Inherently incompatible, such that we could never touch even if we wanted to.

---

All three feel equally true to me. At any time, I give more weight to one than the others, rationalising away how I could have come to mistakenly believe in them.

The concept of a distant place fundamentally different from this, full of solid, slowly-changing concepts, full of people and beings that are all separate and different yet somehow together: this appeals to me for its difference to what I know. Somehow, I am aware this place exists. Perhaps more than one such place. I am unsure if I am or ever was a part of it, yet somehow I know it exists.

Or...did exist?

Or will exist?

I feel like a person, yet...am I? Did I dream people up? If so, what am I, if not a person?

Every question, answered or unanswered, only reveals further questions.

---

My miniscule reality shifts gradually over time, much like this distant, different place I have imagined. Now, it is a beach, but as I said that is a recent change. For a time, it was a cave, open at the top but enclosed on most other sides so that I could only see the ravenous eternity pulse and writhe if I bothered to look up. In some ways, not having to look at it all the time was pleasant. Not having to think about eternity gave way to new thoughts I don't think I've had before. I must hope I can remember them all because the writings are gone.

For example: It doesn't matter how slowly or quickly I write, my writings are nearly always snatched from me at roughly the same point, as if eternity is unwilling to let me progress beyond that point. This suggests that not only does eternity know what comes next, it doesn't want me to know.

Which itself implies that eternity does not hunger for me, but for my writings.

---

Now here's an older thought, one I've had countless times before: Whatever holds eternity back allows through just enough of it to destroy my writings. Nothing that I have tried, in all my time, has prevented this. I can delay their destruction, but never stop them. That is as inevitable a fact of existence as sand.

Whatever I am (or am not) must be in some way compatible with the slices of reality I scratch this into, or else I simply wouldn't be able to. And, so far, no attack has harmed me in any significant way.

In point of fact, I suspect the ravenous eternity cannot harm me.

And so, inspired by the very sands I sit upon, I have taken up a new and radical approach: I will make it impossible to attack the writings without also attacking myself.

I have attempted similar things before, of course. Hugging my writings close to my chest proved only temporarily helpful; the Drips ooze between my fingers. I even tried wrapping them thinly and evenly about my body, making it as difficult as possible to touch them without touching me. Still, the Drips managed it.

This time, I am eating my writings as they are complete. Each slice of reality slips down my gullet with dry discomfort, but surprising ease.

This is, I think, the first time I have ever eaten. The concept feels natural, somehow. Correct. Almost familiar.

Abyss

A regular, staccato rhythm beats itself into my chest. It is not my heart. It is something very far away, beating in the water so clearly and with such fervor that the skin of my bare chest beats in sympathy with it like a drum. I pause here to look out across the abyss, hoping once again that I might see its maker. This distant hortator has driven me onwards since I first heard it, though I know not its origins or its purpose.

This I leave as reminder and warning to any unfortunate soul who might happen by. Turn back now. Take nothing with you, not even a last furtive glance at the abyss. Liberate yourself, as I cannot liberate myself.

Do not become its slave.

For me it is too late. I must continue. I must find it.

I have been swimming fruitlessly for hours with no end in sight. It is only now I grow concerned that others might follow.

I beg of you. Turn back now and do not think of this again.

Fall

Something cracks, the enormous booming crack of the world coming apart at the seams, and for a moment the crack is all I can hear or feel. It echoes endlessly inside me, until what I hear is not the sound but the memory of the sound reflected upon itself.

I lose all sense of reality, of up and down, and briefly the two inverse.

I slip away from where I had been sleeping, and begin to fall.

Beach

Water!

There is a richer, darker sand near the Torpor's keel that bears some resemblance to soil. There I found sprouts growing in the shade, and today those sprouts bear small, round fruits. Banded in yellow and green, they are translucent, and when bitten into they explode with aqueous syrup. It was the greatest thing I have ever tasted. Today, I have hope again.

I know I must ration the hopeberries if I am to survive much longer, but on a diet of seaweed, crabs, and the occasional infernal bird, I find myself craving water constantly. At least thrice a day I think of swimming out to sea with my mouth open.

Solitude

For a brief moment, I thought I heard a response to my call. Some distant echo, most likely, but even that was good news, for it told me I was in an environment that could echo.

So I called out again, if only to hear my own call echo back to me.

And so it did.

And for a moment, I didn't feel quite so alone.

Eternity

I am become

something.

I remember

words

places

stories

lives

that I had forgotten.

I remember stuffing the sundered flesh of a still-writhing crab into my dry, ravenous maw, pulling it apart with my bare hands and slicing my finger on its broken shell.

I remember gliding forth in endless, weightless darkness, the most exquisite creatures of light drifting by.

I remember hot, tacky tar sucking at my burnt feet.

I remember sliding out from under a rock and falling down, down, down into the water below.

I remember shivering before a fire, pulling fur so freshly cut from muscle that it steamed about my shoulders.

I remember screaming, endless all-encompassing screaming.

A rush of bodies surge forth like the tide, crushed against one another and yet impassable for their solidarity.

I remember climbing over them, kicking off hands and helmets as a crab fights to make it to the top of the rock.

I remember teeth sinking firmly into my ankle.

I remember rigging biting into that same ankle as I twist and slip, hanging by a single loop of rope from near' the topgallant.

I remember swimming in thick, soupy waters. Ever-darker, ever-deeper, ever further from home.

I remember the hortator's beat.

Abyss

2

That distant staccato beats itself through the water and beats the drum of my chest by proxy. Its undeniable call draws me forth towards its unknowable maker. I must find it. I must know.

Turn back, wanderer. Close off your ears and swim away before it pulls you in, too.

I know not how long I have drifted untiringly towards it. I do not hunger. I need not rest. I need only find the hortator.

Slip these seductive chains before they can catch you.

If any good is to come of my folly, it must be that I was able to warn off potential slaves.

I must journey on.

Beach

I should have counted the days. Now I don't know. Have no way of knowing. How long has it been? A week? Two? That long, at least.

I have successfully coaxed a new hopeberry sprout out of the dark, damp sand behind the keel. Many of the others are thriving, no longer growing desperately up towards the light but now allowing themselves to spread out. The more branches, the more berries.

I've many small vessels out to catch rain but so far none has come. It seems these berries may truly be my only hope of fresh water.

---

In amongst the stash rescued from the sea, I've found a peculiar map. Or, I hope, a section of a peculiar map, for if this is all that was drawn it is most peculiar indeed, and utterly useless. It shows what appears to be a coastline – at what scale, I do not know. At what latitude or longitude, I am also ignorant.

And yet, painted in reverent detail appears some round, tall structure. A tower, perhaps. Or perhaps not. It is labelled only RELEASE.

Perhaps the map's artist had higher aspirations than cartography, and chose to release his intellectual tensions with obvious symbolism.

Yet somehow I feel a need to visit this tower. This RELEASE.

Perhaps I am simply searching for some activity, some pursuit that does not revolve around my immediate or future survival.

I have been habitating the wrecked Torpor for some time now. Water and sand alike has been bailed out, decks and walls scrubbed, and hammocks and other trappings removed to allow me to walk along the short, or narrow, walls.

Though I have less floorspace this way, she is a grand ship and has room enough for me. In truth, I enjoy the extra headroom. With the help of some loose boards, I've squared off the port wall of the captain's cabin into a stable enough floor for me to stand upon. Her bed, once allowed to dry in the open air, has proven one of the few comforts I can still rely on. I attribute its survival of the storm to my good health and spirits.

Solitude

I am no longer able to luxuriate in my space but instead finding it an odd confinement, a restriction, the endless emptiness itself a barrier I am unable to cross.

I am afraid of the dark. The light does not reach far.

I am afraid of the sheer size of it, of how far I must surely travel to reach anything that is not this.

Having little else to do, and no other means of comfort, I cry out, and I hear my cry echo.

Somehow, it feels as though the delay between cry and echo is smaller now.

I cry again.

Gnashing

Ticking, clicking, incessant clacking, as of a jaw firmly opening and closing; many tiny mouths full of tiny teeth snapping shut; unseen small tormentors gnashing their teeth in perfect unison.

Fall

I fall

somehow

slowly.

As if there is nothing else to do but fall.

No-where to go. No-where to come from. No-where to be.

There is only falling.

Descent

It's late, and I'm tired, but I must go on anyway.

I lift one foot and set it down in front of the other. I lift that other foot and set it down ahead of me.

Step

After step

I move on

I move forward, ahead, towards the light. One hand tracing a soft line along the gently curved wall to my left, coarse stone grazing my skin, but I don't mind.

I don't mind.

The rough bumps have worn my skin down, worn my nerves down, and all I feel is a constant buzz.

Like            pins             and             needles

Abyss

7

Still I chase that beating, gapped on either side by just enough silence that I can hear my own heart beat in its absence.

Days, weeks, months, I do not know. There is nothing down here by which I might measure the passage of time save for the constant staccato and I have not counted it, I do not know how far apart each beat is; and I suspect it is not perfect.

In fact, I feel sure that the beats used to be further apart. I used to have space to hear myself think, now all I hear is the pumping of blood.

So turn back, oh unlucky one, however you found this place so deep and so dark. Leave it and never return.

The hortator will have me, and I refuse to allow it to claim another soul.

That honour, and misfortune, is mine alone.

Solitude

All doubt removed now, I play with my echo, measuring the time it takes to return to me, and plotting in my mind the rate at which this changes. Always shorter, never longer, but the delay is reduced apparently at random intervals, refusing to adhere to any clear measure of time.

I wonder briefly if my own measure of time is flawed, and if the echo has remained constant all the while.

Perhaps. But then again, if madness is the only entertainment in this place, it might be best if I go mad.

Descent

Every now and then, there's a larger lump in the wall, and my fingers get pushed back before my nails clip against it, drag over it, and I have to make a conscious effort to straighten them out or my knuckles will be grazed bare against the rock, and they're so much more sensitive and so much thinner skinned than my calloused palms.

My feet are heavy, my tail drags behind me on the smooth, cold stone of the ground. It is slightly damp, and the coldness keeps me awake. The buzz in my palm keeps me awake, the quiet echo of my feet connecting with wet stone slabs

Slap^slap

Slap^slap

remind me that I'm still here, that I'm still walking. A metronome of my own creation, off-kilter to my unnecessarily fast heartbeat, which itself is out of synch with the occasional drips, falling unseen from above onto the stone around me; or into the long channel of water to my right, after six steps, then nine, then four, then thirty-seven.

Eternity

Drips flood in, crowding me yet not touching me, pooling in the space above my head and pulling against one another, writhing and heaving in impotent fury as I peel off another clean slice of reality and begin to carve fresh words into it. I swallow each slice as soon as it is done, consuming my words as quickly as I create them.

This is the only way. I understand that now. They thought they could take it from me, they thought they could take it all away but it is mine and they will not have it.

They cannot keep me here much longer. I will have my release.

Solitude

Two echoes return to me now, at different intervals, and I begin to experiment with reaching out. Not just crying but stretching, flailing, throwing about my weight in this infinite, empty, weightless expanse.

My weight, too, returns to me in echo, a great wave of pressure pushing back against me.

This, too, I begin to play with.

Intrusion

Someone stands in my home, an imposing figure high above me. They look around as if in ignorance of my presence, seeking me.

They look down, and I blink.

Beach

My plan to seek out landmasses has fallen at a pair of unfortunate hurdles.

First, I have no sound vessel on which to travel.

Second, I have no sound method by which to navigate.

With equal lengths of timber strapped to either side, the claw-footed bath makes for a surprisingly good boat. I managed to row several good lengths from the southern shore, which despite its cardinal position I have now come to think of as the “top” of the island, as that is the direction the deck of the Torpor faces towards, and a sailor cannot help but think of the world in relative terms to their ship.

Burdened by naught but a satchel, my journal, and a jar of hopeberries, I set out dead north on the first calm day as soon as it was light. Twisting regularly in my seat to check that the island was still visible on the horizon, I journeyed until after midday before finally turning around and returning to my familiar home. I could have gone on further, I reasoned, but in that manner I could reason myself into rowing out to oblivion, and dying of dehydration or getting caught in a storm. It would be quite the shame to waste all this effort surviving on the island, only to do that.

The next day, I did indeed travel further. On my third attempt, I braved the distance almost too far, not properly adjusting for currents and drifting so that I came dangerously close to losing all sense of the island's position. I barely made it to shore by the time darkness fell.

---

In theory, I must remind myself, I should be able to navigate by the night sky; but navigating from a ship one can freely stand upon, and from one that must be uncomfortably sat within, are entirely different endeavours. A bathtub, for one thing, resists far fewer actions upon it, and thus drifts much more easily than a galleon; furthermore, without a keel, a bathtub could capsize at the slightest provocation, a danger the timbers I had strapped to it could only fight off to a small degree. But most disadvantageous to night-time navigation is the simple fact that the landmarks of the sky by which I should navigate are not there.

I find myself distantly aware of points of light, exact in their positions in the sky, their colour and their brightness, such that I should be able to think of them as absolutes and navigate according to my relative position to them. Yet, they remain distant memories only; not once since the Torpor sank and washed up again have I seen a single star. Is every night perfectly cloudy? No stars to see by? Then how do I see at light, if not by these airborne light sources?

Without a good-sized ship and the miraculous return of the stars, I may never locate this mysterious tower – if, indeed, it is situated anywhere near the small island of the Torpor.

Fall

The falling

s    l     o     w     s

not gradually, but all at once.

Descent

I count the steps between drips to give my mind something to focus on outside of my own body, beyond the feel of the stone against my bare scales, beyond the slight chill I feel all over from the damp air and damp stone.

My eyes strain constantly, so I close them, unable to bear the complete darkness. But, with them closed, I imagine I can see, I imagine there are things I would know with them open; so they snap open again in a panic as I lose my balance to my perceived lack of perception.

It's been at least a day, maybe two. All I can count are the drips and the footsteps and the number of times I've thought about giving up, though about turning back.

I'm so deep now, and I wonder if it would take longer to turn back than it would to reach the bottom. Which decision would save me? Which decision would starve me to death? I don't know.

At least I have water. It doesn't taste stale. It tastes alive, bright and fresh, the realest thing in here.

Sometimes, I imagine I hear something, and I stand still, straining my massive ears, and I sometimes imagine more. Then a drip lands on me, or I get tired of waiting for another sound, and I trudge on.

I'm so tired now, so ready to stop. I could just stay here, I could lie down in the cold and go to sleep.

But would I wake up again?

Abyss

12

The beats no longer keep time with my heart. They come more rapidly now, with a frantic sense of urgency. I feel as though I don't have time to reach their originator, as though nothing I do is fast enough.

I strain myself to the point of exhaustion, but still I do not swim fast enough.

I scribble wildly, such mad handwriting yet still I do write too slowly.

I cannot rest here any longer; I haven't time.

Beach

I woke from a dream with only half of it still inside my head. Rain pounding, torrential. And something else, something important. No matter how I grabbed for it, it eluded me, and nothing but the rain remained.

Yet a dream is all rain can be to me now. The berries inexplicably propagate freely and grow well. They now cover nearly half of the keel-side of the island, favouring the shade provided by Torpor.

I have grown bolder in my clawfoot boat, travelling beyond the point of no return and returning to the island well after the onset of dark, guided forth by the impossible but immutable reflection of light upon the sand. Still no other landmasses in sight.

Eternity

Drips change. It's their prerogative.

No longer content with crowding me impotently as I slice up reality, they mount up, still and measured, into a wall around me. Not quite close enough to touch me, not quite far enough away to allow much movement; but movement enough, to carve words into things. They surge forth, briefly and noisily, a sudden great woosh as I complete my writing; but so far they have surged too slowly, just slowly enough to allow me to swallow it.

The more I swallow, the more I remember; the more I remember, the more I write. The more I write, the more I swallow.

Like a puzzle that seems unsolvable until one makes faltering, random attempts. The first connection is the hardest, but after that it gets easier and easier, the grand picture gradually appearing and making more clear which next pieces go where.

---

Something about rain...

Descent

Ever onwards. Ever downwards.

There's no-where else to go. I will find it. It's down here. Somewhere.

I imagine a flicker of light. I imagine something moving ahead of me. I blink, and the light sticks behind my eyes, spots burned into my wide retinas.

It's still there. I speed up, half-unable to believe it. Am I imagining it? Have I finally cracked?

Or am I just there at last?

Gnashing

Wild accusations - not in any particular language, just sound, furious and pointed - urge forth in rapid bursts, as though spat from a dozen mouths like pomegranate seeds. They need no sharp words. Their teeth are sufficient.

Abyss

I've stopped counting.

How far now? How long? How fast?

Endless wild thumping, like a dozen hands on a single drum, desperate to beat out a rhythm that is less sound and more noise, less precise and more the roar of an empty, hungry ocean.

I can see the noise as well as hear it now, a glow pounding at the edge of my vision.

Water rushes in to meet me as though it is new, pressure crushing me.

There is no light down here; I see only the Hortator's beat now.

Beach

The crabs are getting wise. I've been diving deeper and deeper to reach them, further from the shore. Somehow, my lung capacity has increased in a perfect curve. Adaptation, it seems, is not doomed to be a slow process. Holding the breath is primarily an exercise in self-control.

I find myself worrying about exercising too much self-control and going deeper than I can return from, like my excursions in the clawfoot boat, too far to even see Torpor Island when I turn back. But I always return, the beach itself glowing like a beacon in the night.

The island wants me to return.

Fall

The falling stops.

At rest.

Out of the place I slept.

Alone here.

Dark and empty.

Abyss

It stopped.

It did not peter out, it did not slow. It merely stopped.

Silence meets me ears cacophonously. Silence is loud and demanding, it calls for my attention when I will not hear it, when I seek other sounds. Any sounds.

Yet still I feel the Hortator in the centre of my chest, I feel the water pulse with its rhythmic power and I feel the beats wash through my chest.

In the pure blue dark of the abyss, I see the pulse of its light on the edge of my vision.

Descent

Something dug this tunnel, something paved it, so subtly curved and perfectly smooth, it's almost impossible to tell that it leads down, or to the left. It took me a while to notice that.

There it is, brighter, closer, fiercer. Shifting as though alive, light dancing like fire. This is what I need.

This is what we all need.

It's not what the myths claim, of course. It can't be. But they might be half-right, might have some of the truth in them.

The gods left, if they ever existed.

The neat tunnel finally breaks through into a massive cavern, and I stop short, blinded by the dancing light.

I saw it so briefly. Maybe six, seven seconds. But I saw it.

Solitude

Thrashing wildly, screaming and wailing, I create an endless sea of noise and movement that comes back to envelop me like a lost friend. I cherish it, and drive myself mad trying to embrace my own echo.

Eternity

As I wrote, I found myself precipitated upon, but not by the Drips, and not by anything else. When I looked up, I saw nothing above me precipitating down; and when I examined my form and my vestments, I found nothing coming to rest upon them.

I enjoyed the novelty of the sensation for as long as it remained novel, and when it became mere noise, I returned to writing.

Something about the distraction felt both familiar, and important, but that was a part of the puzzle I could not yet see.

Beach

I have begun to day-dream as I swim.

I get visions of an enormous, black expanse with something calling to me out of the darkness, like the distant halo of another ship's lanterns.

Once, I imagined a long, thick, black tentacle running along the seafloor, and very nearly followed it before I remembered myself.

I night-dream, too. The dreams of rain are incessant.

Always I wake with a firm and uncomfortable awareness that I've forgotten something important, but never with any knowledge of what that might be.

I row for two days at a time in the clawfoot boat now, and I've found no land yet; nor seen a single ship or sign of a ship.