Her presence is silent and opaque. 

A secret place.

A piece of porcelain penetralia. 

A puzzle-box, gazing meditatively out over the sloshing, nighted sea.

Umin regards Pyna for a wordless moment, before turning to peer out again into endless, lightless obscurity.

His thoughts meander, and he wonders what face the sluggish waves would present beneath the arching vault of a more common sky. 

One of soft sea-airs and shreds and tapers of high, ribboning clouds. 

If the great grottos were to suddenly crack open. Like an immense, inky egg disgorging its black albumin. 

The Below laid bare to the Above.

“What would we see, and marvel at beneath these surfaces? 

If the sun above shone here.” 

Umin murmurs offhandedly.

Pyna’s small answering smile seems a detached thing, from the rest of her still, introspective mask.

Then love, there

Would be dust

And cinder.

Wed to

Salt.

Syrupy salt-floes suddenly gnash against the grinding hull.

Beetle-black and gleaming.

The wide-bellied craft lists languidly against the yielding obstruction, and the sour song of the Shir, deep in the hull below, takes on a sharper, more astringent note.

Umin unhurriedly adjusts his stance to the slow-canting undergalley.

He frowns and faces Pyna, who stands closely sidelong to him, upright like a frozen sentry. 

Her milky hands like loose shackles laying against the broad-carven forecastle rail.

“I dreamt of Ure, and a ship…”

I know

Of Your

Dreaming…

“Then what is this ship…”

A port of call

A destination.

Umin sighs inwardly, again marvelling at how unmoored upon the Tides he’s become.