A Study in Drowning

by Ava Reid

“You’re right about one thing, though,” she said at last. “We will have to leave eventually.” Preston must have heard the grief in her voice, the tremor of fear. He took her into his arms, her naked back against his naked chest, her head tucked neatly under his chin. His heartbeat sounded like the rhythm of a steady tide. “The only reason anything matters is because it ends,” he says. “I wouldn’t hold you so tightly now if I thought we could be here forever.” “That makes me want to cry.” She wished he hadn’t said it. “I know. It’s not the most original argument, and I’m hardly the first scholar to make it—that the ephemerality of things is what gives them meaning. That things are only beautiful because they don’t last. Full moons, flowers in bloom, you. But if any of that is evidence, I think it must be true.” “Some things are constant,” Effy said. “They must be. I think that’s why so many poets write about the sea.” “Maybe the idea of constancy is what’s actually terrifying. Fear of the sea is fear of the eternal—because how can you win against something so enduring. So vast and so deep. Hm. You could write a paper arguing that, at least in the context of Myrddin’s works. Well, it might have to be an entire thesis.”