Dancing over the ocean

It’s dark. I slowly open my eyes, aware of the current cradling my body. For a brief moment, a feeling of panic washes over me and my awkward movements send uneven ripples across the surface, disturbing the sleepy waters. I take notice and, with great, unnoticeable effort, I concentrate on becoming one with the calm vastness that surrounds me. In a second, my breathing stabilizes and everything returns to its lazy pace.

I’m floating. Wow, how obvious, Aika. It looks like the waves aren’t the only things running slow here. At that remark, an inner debate ensues. Meanwhile, I allow my senses to wander. Where am I anyway? The water seems to stretch indefinitely around me. It appears to meet the night sky at every end whose immensity I can’t even begin to account for. In this situation, one would think I should be terrified. I’m not. Wh      ether that is due to my mind’s preoccupation with itself or due to some other prevalent emotion, I’m not quite sure. As I can’t feel a single tickle of joy or wave of uneasiness, the latter seems an unlikely choice. And well, the other is an even sillier option.

You’re empty. “And you’ve finally caught up.” I softly tell myself. It would have sounded like praise, or sarcasm depending on one’s perspective, if not for the expressionless mask I was currently wearing. How long have I been mindlessly drifting along? My lack of energy tells me I have been riding this ebb for quite some time. I shiver at the notion and this puzzles me. Am I finally beginning to feel again? I decided not to be too hopeful, it was probably just an effect of the cold body that was trying to engulf me.

Hope. Now there’s a word I haven’t thought of in a long while. I try to dig inside myself, to see if I still had some. I’m not surprised I turned up with nothing. Now what do I do? Will I go on like this forever? Am I even complied to do anything about it? And is it just me or is the water rising? Even if my inner voice tried, it failed to move me. I was sinking in the water’s eerie embrace. It was swallowing me whole, and fast. Not a single crease marked my face as the depths consumed me.

I’m drowning. Duh, ‘Ya think? This is the last place where I could ever think of debating with myself and yet, my mind pays me no attention. It continues its inner turmoil. It can’t decide where to place the blame for this end.

The end, huh? It takes little effort to detach myself from my pitiful state. “I seem to be doing this a lot lately.” My lips move without humor. I watch the rest of my body lose oxygen without panic or fear. It’s not that I’m brave, no, far from it. Look closely at my eyes, those two white spheres each owning a black pupil flecked with brown. They once beheld grandeur in all shapes and sizes and had a striking eagerness to witness life. They told a great story to everyone who so much as glanced upon them. Their former glory and their imminent loss set them apart with great distance but in essence, they are one and the same.

I sigh. It was a sound laced not by grief but rather, by a silent melancholy. I lost didn’t I? I gave up fighting the turbulent waves that were sent my way and the rabid rocks that tore at me as I journeyed across them. There was a tinge of guilt in those memories but, it went away just as quickly as it came. Ignoring the weak and futile tugs of emotion delivered by my short-lived nostalgia, I look up. It wasn’t an attempt at anything, just a natural craning of the neck, probably a reflex inherited through the sands of time. Now, what do I see? Nothing, as I would have expected if I still had the urge to predict the outcomes of every seemingly last act after another. Then, when I thought I had seen everything there was to see in this life, a tiny twinkle catches my eye. It wasn’t much, probably a mere trick of the light, easily shrugged off by any slipping consciousness. But, I knew it was the contrary when every inch of my body spoke with unmasked wonder through a single voice. “That’s something.”

It was a star. Not a big and bright one, just a miniscule thing that looked as if the universe could snuff out its glow at any second. And yet, there it was, stubbornly alight as if its whole existence depended on it. That was when I felt it, not just on the surface but all the way to the farthest reaches of my being. I found hope again.

I started to notice them, first, bit by bit until suddenly, they filled the night sky – bright and beautiful. “You have been there all along, haven’t you?” I directed the words above with a warm tone that cracked and peeled away the mask I’d been wearing. My voice pleasantly surprised me. I realize belatedly that I was no longer drowning; instead I was on a ship, one equipped with a steering wheel. I let my hands rest on it, savoring the moment and breathing deep as if it were the first time, before grasping the wheel and proceeding to navigate the ship with renewed determination. I was back and I imagined, from a distance, one would see a pair of stars dancing over the ocean as they made their way to the horizon.