The vent in the seafloor was an opportunity, a resting place but also a beginning, a folding back into the earth. Stefan’s death, as much as his life, was an act of creation. He was close to something now; I sensed it. I wanted it too. I remembered the compulsion I felt floating by the surface with my face pressed down into the glass of my mask. The golden light pulling me, a part of me, ecstatically. I couldn’t leave this. I knew the desire, and I wanted to return there.
