Thalassus

Between the blindfold and the time spent asleep, Conor was uncertain which parts of the last day had been real - obscured by the black sash across his eyes - or the dreams of his addled mind. He was certain he was awake now though; the wind that had once carried the texture of sand from the shore had lost the aspect in favour for the feel and scent of salt, and the chill he felt was unmistakably of the night.

Conor attempted to right himself into a sitting position as opposed to the crumpled mess he was in now. The all-encompassing ache of his body - while justified - did not help his efforts, nor did the rocking of the small boat that once cradled him into slumber. What he found most debilitating however were the tight binds at his wrists and ankles. Conor had understood that they were only a formality, but he could feel his wrists were red and raw, even without the gift of sight. A pointed formality.

As he hunched himself to his knees, an unseen hand aided him to a sitting position. Conor settled for sitting awkwardly cross-legged with his arms behind his back. As Conor stretched to try and force out the aches from his back, he felt the unseen hands tugging at the knots of the blindfold behind his head. Soon enough, the seal unfurled, and Conor was once again acquainted with the waking world.

On the horizon, the setting sun was half-swallowed by the distant body of the ocean. The dying light of the sun seemed to radiate across all there was and could be; but across both sea and sky, the warm oranges and yellows were smothered by an even more boundless blue. There was no land in sight, in any direction, but the restless waves kicked up against the fading daylight to create the visage of an endless land of shadowed hills and dunes ever changing.

In the water, Conor saw rolling plains, deserts, civilisations rise and fall with the waves - these small swells atop a truly infinite marine body. Despite his relationship with the Shorefolk becoming unsavoury, Conor still held belief in their monotheism; a religion of water that swallowed other doctrines like the ocean swallowed the sun before him.

As Conor surveyed his surroundings, bearing witness only to driftwood and cobalt abyss, he recalled a sermon he observed in his youth. It was the day of initiation for a new curate. Some townsfolk had gathered down by the bay to listen to another, older curate deliver a sermon during the initiate’s brief voyage onto the water. The kids, however, gathered above on a small, grassy cliffside. They had a better view from there. The initiate rowed for a small ceremonial buoy-like platform out some distance on the waves, where another man dressed in the customary sea-bleached robes awaited him. Conor’s youthful attention wandered to the sermon in the bay as he waited for the initiate to reach the platform. 

The memory had decayed with age, but Conor still recalled some the curate’s speech - teachings he was taught in youth, recited in ritual. Most of all he remembered the intonation of the curate’s voice: words spoken with such force and belief that his voice shook with reverence.

“…As it is written in the Book of Genesis, by the hand of the prophet Moses, that before the earth was of form, that “darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters!” Does the prophet not write so, from the words of his God, that the depths of the waters predate all earthly things? That it sits among the divine!?

"As it is written by the disciple John, the Messiah spoke of the Holy Spirit of God as living water, that would come down from above to cleanse and absolve! The Christian God is spoken as being of three aspects! That God is found within the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost – within ice, within steam, within water!”

The curate continued the comparisons of water to divine powers across many other religions, creeds and dogmas, all as the initiate’s driftwood boat came to a lull. The memory waned in the face of the curate’s monotonous speech – however powerful his delivery. Even then in the heat of day, Conor remembered the sea - every brilliant shade and hue of blue, and ever changing. The words were lost, but he remembered the curate reach the climax of his sermon in unison with the initiate, out on the platform, being thrust below the waves by his head.

“Water is as God - the life bringer! It exists within us and all around us! It is all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful! May those who accept this irrefutable truth one day be blessed, when the time comes to return to the Great Body that we once came from! May the many who have been who now shape us continue to guide us with the wisdom of the Great Body. And may those who serve colour the abyss in their death, as they dyed the world in life!”

Whether those words were spoken in that moment Conor could not truly recall, but such were the ritual words he heeded countless times throughout his youth, spoken in the tone of the elder curate. What he did remember clearly was the flailing of the initiate’s arms as his head was forcibly kept under the ebb of the foamy waves. In that moment, the natural perception and understanding that he was struggling for air, for survival, was replaced by a new perception. In the futile thrashing of the initiates arms as his body drained of air, Conor saw a divine essence enter him, shaking his meagre body like a balloon filling with air. He was being given a gift - his mortal container becoming host to something higher, something greater. In the drowning, a blessing. From then on did he believe.

In memory, he reminisced on the slow, foam-burdened waves of the coast that brought a mere drop of the divine to the initiate’s body. Now, he looked down to the beckoning abyss on the other side of the sun-dyed water, and he wondered if he had ever comprehended his deity in this capacity. He had never seen the ocean so boundless before, so flawless. He had always held fast in his belief, but belief alone did little to bolster his comprehension of the majesty before him.

“Can’t say I’ve ever been taken out this far,” an accented voice spoke to the open air. The voice did not belong to the one who unbound his blindfold - a lesser curate - it belonged to another: a haggardly older man who’s presence was so hushed that Conor failed to notice him. He sat slouched against the side of the driftwood raft they shared, staring at Conor; judging. “…Not for an offering, that is.”

He was a pale, bony and aged man, with eyes that kept a certain knowingness and intrigue behind his tired veneer. Crowned by wavy bleach-blond hair and clad in a midnight blue uniform reserved for those of lifelong service to the faith. Conor wondered if this man could have been the elder curate from his memory, but now he spoke in a tone more befitting of a private conversation. Without that reverence in his voice, he could not tell.

“I’m sure you felt it,” the blond man spoke again in his tired tone, his weighing gaze lifting from Conor and returning to the horizon. “The wind and the waves were strong. Can’t say I remember the last time the Great One’s guidance was this forceful.” 

Conor remained silent and matched the elder’s gaze to the endless ocean. He understood well that the Great One’s domain was not limited to the ocean alone. He could not deny the wind had indeed been strong, but if it truly was divine in origin… Conor stopped his thoughts there. Given his misgivings with the Shorefolk, he couldn’t imagine any divine plan for him held good intention.

In his peripheral, Conor saw the elder’s head turn back to face him, his blond curls catching the final rays of sunlight.

“It’s a welcome change. Last spring’s offering just had us floating around for hours; we barely got out of view of the shore before the time came. Or the offering of this last autumn, finding him washed out an’ spat out some weeks later? I’m sure the dread reached you an’ yours; people fearing we had displeased the Great One…” The elder trailed off, sinking into thought. “It’s been an uncertain six months. I’d prefer not to see the towns in that state again,” he spoke, collecting himself and rising to his feet, rocking the boat with the distribution of his weight. “So, if you do find an audience down there, do your best to stay in their good graces. If not for us, then for you.” 

The elder knew of Conor’s grievances for his people, and made requests of him nonetheless. He found slight gallows humour in that he had the power to decided the wellbeing of the Shorefolk villages, even though it was he who was being offered.

“I won’t need the restraints then,” Conor spoke up, finally breaking his silence after however many hours spent floating in that small driftwood boat. The elder met his eyes, gauging his meaning, his intent.

“If you wanna curry favour in their home, you’d best not drag shit in on your shoes.”

The elder thought for a while longer, then nodded to the curate to cut his binds. Conor felt a blade slit the zip tie constricting his wrists and instantly felt the relief in his shoulders.

“I’ll take the mail though,” Conor made a demand of the elder as a sort of personal payback for the one demanded of him. The elder reached into a burlap bag beside him and heaved out a sun-shined mess of interlinked chain: sinking mail as it was occasionally referred to. The elder extended the mail past Conor to the other curate as Conor felt the last zip tie around his ankles rend. 

The mess of beaten metal rings descended past Conor’s eyes, each of the hundreds of rings catching the final amber light of the sun as it sank finally and fully into the domain of the deep. The weight of the mail reintroduced Conor to the ache of his shoulders he had lost just moments ago.

“Looking at you now I find myself wondering just how many of these rings I have weaved in my life…” Conor gave no reaction - not out of spite, but of disinterest. Conor adjusted the mail to sit as comfortably on his shoulders as he could, turned to his right and perched at the side of the boat. The sun was behind him, and now he bore witness to the dark purple of the cosmos creeping onto the horizon - dying the fading blue sky above like smoke.

“May the Great Body accept you and absolve you, and honour you for your given service,” the elder spoke. Conor understood that was his queue to die: to roll backwards overboard and allow the mail to guide him to the unknown reaches of the deep; no longer a person, but an offering of worship. 

For the voluntary ending of his own life and the erasure of all he had ever experienced, Conor thought he would hesitate more than he did. Instead, he saw the colours of the sky fly from purple to navy to amber to blinding sunset before crashing through the barrier of water that separated the world above from the world below. 

The influx of saltwater forced Conor’s eyes to shut. In his blindness, the weight of the chain mesh created the illusion of a grasp pulling him down into the abyss. With effort, Conor forced his eyes open - seeing the shaky silhouette of the driftwood boat above get smaller and smaller - and managed to turn onto his stomach to face the encroaching darkness.

Pale beams and rays of sunlight pierced through the blue, bringing small lifeforms, residue and dreck into light. With his descent, the rays fade into the ocean and lose their lustre, becoming as memories, as the depth of the darkness below only grew. 

Conor saw his death in the pall below and felt the building pressure of the ocean on top of him. He felt no fear in welcoming it, just as he had felt nothing as he fell from the boat. As the inky abyss below expanded, Conor began to see his life dance across its perfect surface.

His life had been as a Shorefolk - his faith in the Great Body served as his guiding principles. Even still, he found grievance in the worship of the Shorefolk: he found them too dependant on the bounty of the Great Body, and felt their offerings were too repetitive and shallow in meaning. He raised his belief, but the Shorefolk took it as an insult to their ways rather than a show of faith. 

Ostracised, his way of life crumbled, leaving him only with the guidance of his faith. Perhaps that was why he felt no fear in condemning himself to drowning. With his life uprooted, all that was left was to give himself over wholly to the embodiment of his worship. The cinema of his life cast upon the black below had laid bare his inner workings; he was not about to die with regrets, but now he understood why.

The mail had dragged Conor down to a realm where light no longer held power. The gloom that seemed so distant at the bottom of the ocean now eclipsed all Conor could see. In the darkness he began to see shadows, in the encompassing ocean he felt the ripples of movement push through him. He thought he could hear whispers uninhibited by the dampening effect of the infinite water surrounding him. In his delirium, he tried reaching out and grabbing at the darkness. He failed, but still he felt like he could. He adjusted his position to swing his legs underneath him in an attempt to land on something in the nothingness. He made contact with nothing. There was nothing, yet still the darkness shifted and moved around him. In the absence, there felt a presence.

How deep had he sank now? How long had he been sinking for? How far away is the other world? Delirium, he thought. Delirium, delirium, he repeated as if clinging to his mind against the shadows that tried to wretch it from him; it was the only thing left of him now. He felt wind.

Where has the pressure gone?

The recognition felt foreign, almost granted to him, but true. He could move, against all understanding. Light held no power down here, nor physics apparently. What did?

How long has it been since I drew breath?

The though came unbidden to the forefront of his mind, triggering a visceral realisation. The desire for breath wracked every cell of his body in a great swell. He thought himself ready, but panic triggered convulsion like toxic shock, and his lungs made a futile gasp for air. 

They did not draw in air. They did not draw in water. They drew in nothing. 

Conor suddenly felt overwhelmed with exhaustion. He floated on his back, looking up at the infinite abyss above him. In the black he saw the silhouettes of beings that could not be given form. He saw visions of places and times he could not place nor feasibly justify. His head was filled with the dreamy haze felt in the final waking moments, but the impressions of the darkness were beyond that. They were intentional, purposeful, vivid. It was his own body that was failing him.

The darkness asked questions of Conor, communicated through a medium he could not begin to conceive. 

Break    Vessel    Gigas    Kin    Life    Incarnate Charybdis

What the questions asked of him, Conor’s mind did not retain. Instead, he recalled his earlier thought of giving himself to his faith. He need not comprehend the dimensions of his deity. Even through the haze and the abyss and the shadow, he understood that it was beyond all.

He awoke to the caress of wind, coating his body with the kisses of light dewy rain.

The sky hung black and infinite, decorated by distant stars and quasars. The night was chill, the rain permeating and the waves restless. He felt at home within it all. 

Down on the waves he saw pieces of driftwood scattered helplessly, carried along by the will of the waves. Their final destinations were of no importance, but yet were already known.

He looked upon the world with clarity through reawakened eyes. The winds carried the iciness of absence seeking to be present once again. They signalled not a beginning, but continuance. They carried the rain to wherever the divine deemed it necessary. In the distance, the drumming of thunder heralded return.