A Letter to the Luminous Deep (The Sunken Archive, #1)

by Sylvie Cathrall

Some people operate under the misguided assumption that a sailor never truly fears the sea. On the contrary, I find that my extensive experience navigating the great waves has taught me too much about the terrors of the endless watery depths. The only reason why I am able to step aboard a ship at all is because I developed an innate ability to “abstract” the sea, if you will. In other words, when I stand on deck and look out at the grey or azure or midnight ripples before me, I pretend they are nothing but creases in a flat carpet, one stretched over the thick floor of the world under which nothing rests, and into which nothing could possibly fall.

There is something philosophically crisis-inducing about the seemingly infinite.

Today has been a ceaseless onslaught of misfortune, to frame it positively.