From
<b>'What if we lived in tune with the water?'</b>
<span class ='opening'>FINAL
PROCESS</span>
[[Play]] There is no glass now, just an open hole. Sunlight reflects off the water giving it this almost golden colour. These are her favourite mornings usually, the sun shining through the water sky above. Gently warming the sand below. She’s learnt to feel the granules of wet sand underneath her feet, fragments of shell. It was hard at first, her feet were so used to being covered and contained, wrapped in socks and shoes, but she’s leafining. Really she should stop walking soon, she’s not the right generation anymore to be a stepper. She’s planning to go out with the rays again when she gets back, she wants to learn how to move like them. Slick and smooth, cutting through the water.
She takes another breath. Her lungs are starting to fail, but she’ll be there soon.
The tracks are several metres above the water line. They’ll probably have to move them again soon, more rickety metal on rickety metal. Soon, surely no one will use them. A drop splashes up and lands on her lip. It sinks in like butter. She feels soothed.
A drop dries on the piece of paper resting on her lap, [[she looks closer ->piece of paper]]
She looks at the clock on the carriage wall, then fingers the gills on her neck.
[[Not long now. ]] The paper is wrinkled, as though it was once wet, and is now dried. Everything on the train has come from the sea. She recognises the language as English. Her father had been born on that land mass, and she visited it periodically for a while. The land mass is still there she is sure, but England was swept away with the tides.
The paper is a warning. One journey limit. A message that you are not welcome to stay. More and more often families are found on the train she remembers, sleeping in the luggage rack, showering in the small toilets, snacking, but never really eating from the food in the buffet car. That’s a phrase she hasn’t thought of for a while!
There is very little food left. No space to grow crops. Not above ground anyway. And the food they consume underwater isn’t comparable really.
You have to choose how to train your stomach, which direction to go in… up to the mountains, down to the water depths. The train company has a couple of steel warehouses, but rumours are the supplies are growing thin, even there.
She looks around. Her face is blank. She wonders if any of these people are from the relic families. The relics search for a life that has long since disappeared.
She looks [[out the window]]
She looks at the clock on the wall. She fingers the gills on her neck.
[[Not long now. ]] One more deep breath.
She checks one last time.
“Procedure one: 67/85/12
Procedure two: 43/98/1
Procedure three: 22/103/-55”
Procedure three is very soon. No going back from here.
She wonders if there is anything she’ll miss from a life above ground. She’s not really lived here for decades. Another deep breath. She has to keep breathing.
It’s often small things. Some say you feel them almost instantly, others have said that it all emerged after years of living below the surface. The feeling of sun directly on your skin, dew beneath your feet, running, snow, cake, birthday candles, crunchy autumn leaves under boots, watching a fire crackle, singing, feeling cool tears run down hot cheeks, a soft mattress, a good book, and the smell of old pages. Deep breath.
In some ways procedure three feels insignificant. She’s already doing it. She’s lived on the sea bed for many years. But there has always been a door to a life up in the mountains, not down in the water.
She takes a long moment.
She looks out to [[the sea]]
She looks up to [[the mountains]] She thinks of the rock formation where she’s lived for the past 100 seasons. It’s this perfect mix of smooth and jagged. She’s reminded of a story she read in a museum once, of an old security technique used in Scottish houses. Staircases would be built with imperfections. A step missing, some steps close together, others far further apart. You’d always know if someone new was coming, someone new to the house, an intruder, because you could hear them trip up. They wouldn’t know the pattern, they wouldn’t know the rules of how to climb. When she first moved to the formation, she’d get caught. Huge gashes in her thighs, her hair caught around jutting rocks. In time she’s learnt the route. Now she can slip through those rocks with her eyes closed.
She knows the pattern, she’s not an intruder anymore.
The choice when it was first given felt so impossible it was almost random. A life in the skies, or a life under the sea? They were two unknowns. You just had to pick one. Her brother chose the skies, she chose the sea. She doesn’t know why, still.
She strokes her gills and closes her eyes.
Not long now. The top of the mountain is obscured by clouds. Today they a soft and round and pink. Like… she searches her memory for the word … candy floss?
She doesn’t get to look at the mountains much, and when she does they are more of a shifting looming presence. Through the water she can hardly see the shape of the rock, or the intense green. Were they always this green?
When they were asked to choose, up or down? You can’t stay here, it was always the green that caught in her throat, that asked that question? That made her wonder. The springy moss, and the leaves. And grass, and trees. Flowers too, she hasn’t seen flowers for a very long time.
Her brother is in the clouds, many many seasons have passed since they saw each other last in any form. She’s had to imagine all the ways in which he has grown old. She tells herself stories about each of the lines on his forehead, the scars on his arms and hands from twigs and rocks and falls. She imagines that his laugh is now slower and deeper, but his eyes are exactly the same.
His eyes are a dark blue. She looks to the mountains again, and then down to the water, and touches her gills. She has always known they’d never see each other again, but this moment, or the moment after this one is the one that truly decides it. What kind of person is she to make that choice? Is it better to live a life pretending a door is open?
She lifts her fingers from her gills and closes her eyes.
Not long now. The train rumbles gently below her thighs. Her organs are balancing and then rebalancing and again and again. All of her moving constantly.
She tries to relax, consciously breathing one deep breath followed by a long exhale. Her lungs aren’t used to this. She feels very aware of her body and the machinery and this way the two of them are meeting. She can’t get distracted, she must stay concentrated.
She closes her eyes. Her senses feel so very close. The train is both disconcerting and nostalgic. These emotions often come together. She has memories of a time before. She was a child, she thinks. Red soft seats, white plastic tables, thick gleaming glass in the windows. She got distracted. She needs to keep breathing. Not long now.
She looks [[out the window]]
Or maybe down at the [[piece of paper]] which lies limply in her hands.