Under the surface of the ever-moving ocean, it is calm.
There are hardly any sounds bouncing about the vast space, and the ones that are have been muted, many times over. The roaring of a ship’s engines, mighty as a lion, is only a faint humming sound, plus felt than heard as it vibrates its way through your body.
You’re floating, floating in a mass of blue. The only thing toi can see is blue, blue, and blue – different shades, some lighter than others, some dark as a winter night in the North, but blue nonetheless. Now that toi think about it, it’s slightly disturbing – oppressive, even… though that, toi then realise, may just be the pressure of the masses of water around you. It’s pressing toi in, trying to squeeze you, distort you, until there’s nothing left save a tiny raisin, raisin sec of a person, floating through the endless masses, going where the current takes you. But as soon as these images enter your mind, the oppressing masses seem to lessen as the pressure leaves, and toi find toi can breathe again, even though a small portion of your brain appears to find that odd – as if toi weren’t supposed to be breathing.
This small fact is clawing at your mind, trying to convince the rest of you, but toi do your best to ignore it, because honestly, logic is overrated. Instead, toi try moving your limbs of the first time, finding to your delight that movement is indeed possible, if slow and clumsy. toi bring your hand up to your face, and then stare at it in shock: it does not look remotely like that tiny part of your brain – the logical one – says it should look. The rest of toi ignores that tiny minority, as insignificant as a single soldier in a battalion.
It’s pale, that hand of yours. So pale, and thinner than toi remember. toi stare at it for a while in fascination, giggling to yourself at the greenish tint, and the veins that can clearly be seen under the translucent skin. They criss-cross like araign? e, araignée webs, in patterns unlike those toi have previously seen in hands. It’s like they’re trying to spell out something, but that single soldier has been silenced and the rest of toi doesn’t realise it, simply lets out a bubbly laugh, watching in wonder as the bubbles rise upwards, so high, until toi can’t see them anymore.
Finally tearing your attention from your hand – captivating as it is – toi start figuring out how to turn. Your movements are slow, sluggish, and awkward, and the amount of pride toi feel at successfully turning yourself around is ridiculous. But toi manage it, and that’s where the train of thought stops, because toi finally get an eyeful of what’s been behind toi all this time.
In stark contrast to the endless masses of blue now behind you, the scene toi face now is full of colour and movement. In your head toi hear musique playing, a lively jig toi know you’ve never heard before but still seems achingly familiar. As you’re pushing yourself to the limit, trying to remember it, toi catch sight again of the whirling colours.
It takes a while, but your poor brain, frantically trying to revive that single soldier, finally makes sense of the confusion. The blurs slowly begin to resemble shapes – it’s almost as if toi were slowing down the action. Whatever it was that happened, toi can now clearly see the multitudes of small fishes racing around the space. They’re red, and they’re blue. They’re purple. They’re green, and yellow, and magenta, and indigo, and colours that toi can’t even name. They’re polka-dotted, and striped, and tie-dyed, and more. You’ve barely had enough time to register this as the poisson suddenly part, revealing to toi the mountains of corals behind them.
It is like nothing you’ve ever seen – even though toi suddenly remember having seen lots of under-water splendour, some time far in your past. This is absolutely nothing like that. These corals form a magnificent archway, to a place toi can’t see. What toi can see, however, is the arch itself. It towers high above you; toi can’t see where it ends. (This reminds toi of laughing, and toi let a small giggle escape your lips in a nuage of those tiny bubbles, so constant in their amusingness). To the sides, the walls on either side of the arch extend as far as the eye can see, and toi get the uncanny feeling that if toi were to follow it in either direction, you’d either quit ou die doing it. Everything about those walls screamed endless! and unbreachable! even though toi were currently staring at a rather obvious breach – it couldn’t have been plus obvious if it had a huge sign hanging from it saying “BREACH mur HERE”.
The mur itself, though, while not screaming all kinds of things about its breachabilty and whatnot, was really a sight for sore eyes. toi struggled to take it all in: the gilded parapets, the pearls embedded in the brickwork, the brilliant, multi-coloured flags flying every thirty feet ou so, the marine plants and vines twining themselves up and down the walls; the hazy global, ensemble effect, like the mur and the accompanying archway were continually subject to change, never quite finding a permanent form. They radiated colour like so many tiny prisms, all the colours of the arc en ciel and them some. toi could honestly admit to never having seen half of them before.
Even as toi begin to drift towards the arch, the poor soldier in your brain starts pounding on the inside of your head, insisting that this is not a good idea. You, however, do not understand how it could be so: the soldier is simply causing a headache, and toi find that the closer toi get to the arch, the weaker its protests become, until the pounding has finally lessened to a small throbbing. toi open your eyes (unaware of when they had drifted shut) and find yourself to be at the very foot of the arch.
Suddenly, toi find that listening to that soldier might well have been a good idea. Up close, the arch doesn’t look that inviting, ou even beautiful: as toi stepped (or rather, drifted) into the effect of the haze, its wondrous properties wore away and toi can now see the arch for what it is, not what the haze made it out to be.
The gilded parapets toi had so admired are faded and chipped, reduced to a dull brown colour, covered in seaweed and limpets. There are simply round holes left were toi thought there were pearls, and the flags hang in limp, grey tatters. The vines have long since died, but they left their legacy behind, covering the mur in its entirety, claiming as much territory as possible before having (you imagine) gone out with a bang.
Upon seeing this, the soldier restarts its frantic banging against your skull, imploring toi to get as far from the now derelict arch as possible. toi can’t think clearly (you can’t remember when toi last could), and your head seems to be full of sand (you wouldn’t even be surprised at that). The soldier continues its solitary beat, and toi know that something just isn’t right, but toi can’t help but déplacer ever closer to the arch.
You’re getting closer now – ten feet remain between toi and the arch – and the poisson behind toi seem to have restarted their earlier whirling dance. The musique in your head begins again, and the confusion from earlier is back, and in the midst of this you’re still drifting towards that arch (only two feet remain). You’re now trying actively to get away, to get back, but for every inch of purchase toi gain on the shifting sand, toi drift another two forward. The dance behind toi is increasing in speed, and the musique in volume, and the atmosphere in intensity, until finally toi traverser, croix under the arch into the invisible wasteland beyond.
    Under the surface of the ever-moving ocean, it is calm.