At first, I didn't find its gargantuan silhouette mesmerizing. It was a tall drink I didn't need more of on account of my already loose grip of reality, tyrannized by a black shade of stupor. But then the kindled outline yodels an alluring number. It seeps into my arteries, commanding my fins towards the open gate as it ushers me in.  

I never expected the myth to be real.

The depth harbors behind its hypnotic black a marine city where penetrating sun-rays dare not linger. Many books and scriptures and lores and documentaries fail to capture its bioluminescent embrace of aphonic creatures with its own politics and a civilized fifth avenue. 

A plunge into the radiant abyss is so much easier than I thought.

Pre-plunge.

It wasn't much of a yacht to begin with. 

Never enough to cascade the awe down to the jaded people I still keep in my life—sentient rocks ridden with acid who all dare claim friendship jargons to my slipping eardrums. The awe was never for them, nor was the gift wrap written with my name. 

This 2002 yacht, with a 44 feet long hull and a particularly exposed back is old news for someone in their fifties. Akin to having a pet whose petrol meals ate at my faux-leather line of credits. It's just something you buy at this age. Middle age crisis, as they so poignantly put it. 

Everything I do must be either vehemently wrong or bracketed into 'being a phase', a balding teenager with a past due mortgage I am legally not allowed to rebel against. 

The awe of this yacht I'm steering right now isn't for me. My jaw still holds in place at the thought of a oceanic voyage. Au contraire, the awe all goes to Daniel, the little boy sitting at the back facing the cyan blue as it intertwines intertwine with the deep azure. 

Daniel stares at the hyperbolic stretch of water with an authoritarian fixation and two eternally shut eyes. This trip was his birthday gift when he turned eight last year. My ex-wife and I alternate birthdays. I couldn't make it to his last two. 

Of course, I had to make this count. 

Daniel wanted to 'see' the ocean where they harbor Atlantis. He heard about Atlantis on a TV Program I've no awareness of. His mother never cared what he stumbles upon on account that there can't be much that she thought could affect him. After the tenth trip in a month to various bodies of water, she must now be drinking a shot of her error. Amongst many other she's had on the house. Although I dare not revisit the cold war that diluted our waning marriage, I dare say this: Daniel's eyes are more open than ours. 

Daniel didn't have to make do. His mind's eyes have let him travel to oceans vast and solarpunk cityscapes and kingdoms of fauna and gaze-less abyss of the space and back to the soft duvet singing lullabies to his tiny stature. 

"Finished with your paper boats, Dan?" 

There was a brief pause. I bet you he's somewhere on a magical catechism right now and my holler was akin to him having to apologize to his Wonderland-esque cohorts for taking a phone call. "Yeah dad. I put my letters in as well." Before the trip, he asked me for a copy of his Patient Information detailing his condition. He asked for one in braille too to make sure I'm not lying about it. "You won't be fishing won't you?"

"Wouldn't want to accidentally fish one of the people from Atlantis would we?"

"I think with their technology, your fishing hook is gonna be like, like, like a mosquito bite!" 

It was just one documentary designed to induce serotonin in conspiracy theorist, as if their made-up tinfoil fedora wasn't a clear enough indication for them to clean their rooms. Atlantis, a lost sunken city with highly advanced technology where once a utopia stood above the water. Supposedly, it sunk by choice. It descended into the deep where only the most courageous may savour it's light-years ahead society. 

To most adults, it's full of wince-worthy buzz phrases causing recoil within the first five minutes as they establish the premise; To most children, it's vibrant with visuals and occasionally stimulating words blended with a linear burn of fact-driven wisdom; To Daniel, it's hope.

"Not with my hook! You know daddy always buy the best stuff, right?" A blatant lie, but if it's for Daniel, I do buy the best stuff.

Daniel giggles, his small lips form a sunny hill as bright as Jerusalem on the day of anastasis. Often, there's no reason for his smile other than a brush of feather that's a tiny bit softer than the fluttering wind. I find myself increasingly envious of his superpower. A giggle more sedative than the biblical trumpets. 

A giggle I'd rather hear in lieu of a morning brew. 

"When they fix my eyes, I want to see the world with you and mom!"

I paused in my head for what feels like a torrent of eternities. There are only so much lies you can tell an eight year old before their cognizance take up space, replacing that childhood wonder we all repressed. I guess you can get away with more tall tales when the child literally can't see what you're lying about; But somehow, the agitating guilt sure brews faster. 

"That would be something, wouldn't it?"

"Can you come with me and mom to visit nana? She promised me a snorkel if I can be a good boy."

"Dan's pretty confident that he's a good boy now does he?"

"Well yeah cause I've been helping mom fold the clothes! And last week I gave half my pretzel to Rudy even though I don't like him."

"Well why don't you like Rudy now? Was he mean to you?"

"No but he's annoying. He kept naming the class fish "Sushi" even though Ms. Griffin told me I can name him!"

"What did you name him?"

"Poseidon!"

It won't like being called Sushi. But then, the might of the God of the sea would probably be irrelevant to a goldfish whose lifespan depends on how often Rudy and the other kids tap on his bowl. I say tap, I mean club. 

"Oh, we should be pretty close to Atlantis now, Dan! Dad can already see its beacon!"

Daniel GASPS. His lungs must've taken twice his tidal volume with that overjoyed screech. 

"Let's go daddy! Let's go! Let's go! I wanna see! I wanna see!"

It's not the words that pain me so. It's the bouncing. It's him reaching for my arms. It's the brewing guilt of lying once again which pains me so. Before I knew it, I shed yet another tear. It's volume insignificant in the presence of the seven seas; It's mass, a dense neutron star 8 years in the making.  

"Well Dan, you have to promise me something before we can go though."

I locked my gaze to Dan's knitted eyelids. I fear nothing now. Nothing except for one thing. I fear blinking and losing my sight of him. 

"What is it Daddy?"

It won't come out. It keeps whispering in my skull. I can hear the fermented echoes dragging me under from within. I know what I want from him. 

But I can't. 

I just can't.

Say. 

It.

Ten seconds passed. Or maybe it was ten minutes. Or maybe it was ten hours. It must've been at least ten hours. My trembling hands I managed to halt by slowly transporting the tremor up to my jugular vein accompanied by a chattering teeth.

"I want to see you again."

In one fell swoop of a gaseous breakdown, everything came out. I said it. 

But when I said it, I blinked. I blinked and he's not there anymore. The spectre I so carefully constructed with the library of memories I had is now gone. I blinked and now I'm back to square one, not that I actually moved an inch from it. 

"Please... come back,"

I blinked and he plunged deep into Atlantis; To see.

Post-Plunge

I left my yacht to gather rust up there. Soon enough whatever mechanism causes it to float will give up to the splendor of the sea creatures. For now, it will grow acquainted with the paperboats Daniel deployed a year prior. His Medical Information written in Braille will be a testament to his imaginative manger where he was truly reborn with more open eyes than any primate with working retinas. This turbulent spot miles away from shore was his damascene; The same spot will serve as my Gethsemane. 

Today is Daniel's birthday. Last year was Daniel's rebirth. 

Today is my Immigration. Last year was my death. 

This half a century old body isn't equipped with a long-lasting skin. It's thin and frail throughout as it learns the true meaning of thalassophobia. Seconds after, it became clear to me. The dark was blinding and the water was tormenting. Could I have taken eight years of this, my weakness now visible to me.

It became darker than black. 

Then darker than that.

Then darker than even that.

Then, infinitely darker than even that.

After either maybe a few seconds or a few hours or a few eternities repeating itself, I'm breathing through my newfound gills. The dark got bright through my augmented corneas.

Atlantis.

It's everything I've ever heard of. One to one scale of the biblical heaven, only they absconded the sentence indicating that paradise is found not up in the clouds, but deep below the water. I swim my fins faster than I've ever galloped my rotten legs. 

I see him now, gyrating bare-finned, placing bright crustaceans in each pockets like a kid motorized by daydreams. For some reason, his smile washed away my dread and doubts like umbral ash in a year-long monsoon. He swim towards another one a several meters away from him. 

He can see now.

I've done my ascend unto Golgotha... And my descend into Atlantis.