63 Volume 3: The Ocean (2/2)

As if hearing her, a light appeared above and ahead of her. It was white and pale, only strong enough to illuminate her immediate surroundings. Because of the darkness, she couldn't tell whether the light was near or far. She only noticed how it rippled and refracted around her in an odd, but beautiful way. For a while she was hypnotized by it.

Suddenly, she realized the light moved oddly because it was reflecting against the water. She was, in fact, in water. That had been why she couldn't move and felt pressured from all sides. When she understood she was in water, the frail light strengthened and her world expanded.

Suddenly, she could see much further in every direction, but it didn't matter. The world was empty, except for the water and the light.

This was strange. Why was she in water? It didn't hurt to be in it, but it was… unpleasant. The water must be very deep, because it felt oppressive and it made her want to stay very still. For a long time, she didn't even try to move, accepting her circumstances instead and simply enjoyed watching the light play against the now visible sparkling currents.

Something flickered in the current, startling her out of her contentment. She didn't know what it was and it vanished as soon as she'd seen it, but the flicker reminded her of something. If this was water, she should be able to swim.

The moment it occurred to her that she could swim, the light shone a little brighter once again, and she realized she was sitting on the smooth sandy bottom of an ocean. She ran her fingers through the sand for a moment before pushing off from it.

Her hands cut through the ocean easily, and each kick of her leg had her speeding forward. The water pressed her on all sides, but it also gave her a sense of weightlessness, freedom. She stayed near the bottom at first, near the sand that she could touch and see, the first thing in a long time that had texture and ”otherness” to it.

But after a while, she remembered it was cold. The more she thought about the cold, the colder it seemed to get. Until it went from unpleasant to unbearably freezing. She began to shiver uncontrollably. It was so frigid that it hurt.

How did one stop being cold?

. . .

Right, you needed warmth. Where did warmth come from?

. . .

. . . . .

She looked up at the light. It had once seemed neither near nor far, but now it appeared very distant and very high above her. Light meant warmth… usually. But that light up there seemed a bit cold, a bit weak… perhaps it wasn't warm, but perhaps it was. The only way to find out was to get near it.

So she began to swim upward. It was hard to say how long she swam, because the light never moved and she didn't feel tired.

At first it didn't seem like anything changed by swimming upward and she almost regretted leaving the sandy bottom. Even if it was freezing down there, at least there was sand. Here, there was nothing but the vastness of the sea and the light above.

Then she felt it, a very subtle change in the water temperature. Maybe it was because she'd been in the cold for a long time but the moment it got even a tiny bit warmer she could feel it. When she realized it was just a little less frigid by going upward, her confidence was boosted, and she swam more enthusiastically.

The change from cold to warm was in painstakingly small steps. Rather than being impatient, the tiny changes spurred her on. It seems the light up there was a warm one, even if it looked cold.

As the water became warmer, the light did too. Its pale appearance slowly changed into a strong one. Bright piercing rays of light shot through the murky darkness. The blackness of the ocean bottom changed from dark blue to a light blue to a shimmering green.

And then she was there, right under the waves looking up. If she reached out, she could touch the surface. What was above the water? What kind of place did the light live in?

The thought of that unknown frightened her and she stopped. She knew, even though no one had told her, that if she broke the surface, she could not go back down again. This was a one-way trip. Her fear outweighed her curiosity.

She stayed in the green water, where it was warm and comfortable, rather than risk going above to the unknown. This was fine for a little bit, but then she noticed the light was moving. Even if she didn't want to go above the water, she didn't want the light to disappear! She hastily followed it.

No matter how fast she swam, the light seemed to stay ahead of her, sinking further and dimming as it went. It wasn't until her foot hit the sand that she realized she'd unwittingly swam into a shallow part of the ocean. She stopped for a moment, feeling a mixture of fear and frustration.

The light was leaving, but to follow it she needed to leave the sea.

Anxious, anxious, she was so anxious!

But the light made up her mind for her, it dimmed to the point that it was about to disappear. And without its glow, the deathly cold of the bottom of the sea seemed to stretch out its tendrils and began to wrap itself around her again. The fear of freezing became stronger than the fear of the unknown.

She placed two feet on the sand and pushed herself up, all at once forcing herself above the water.

The moment her face surfaced, she felt an overpowering need to breathe. It was as if she'd been holding her breath for a very very long time. The easy swimming underneath the water was gone and now she struggled forward.

After a while, the sea bottom was finally shallow enough she could walk instead of swim. Her body felt like lead, but she was relieved that the air wasn't cold. In front of her was a beach, and beyond the beach was a dark dreary forest. She struggled forward and sat with a thump on the beach, exhausted.

It would have been nice if she could rest here a bit and listen to the wind in the trees, but that light kept dropping further down. Despite having escaped the depths of the ocean, she hadn't escaped its cold. The stretching shadows and darkness seemed to turn the air chilly. Shuddering, she stood back up and began marching through the forest.