Athena's Dive

This April I have signed up for the A-Z challenge: thank you to Mr Arlee Bird for thinking this up, I tried it last year and it was tougher than I had expected: for each day in April that is not a Sunday I will be pasting up a post that starts with consecutive letters of the alphabet: from A to Z. This first post is a random piece of flash fiction: the next 17 are installments of one short story. That's as far as I have planned: but being British one expects to stop for T.

Athena's Dive

Down to the deepest point of the lonely ocean, where compression draws straight through me, there is no strength to resist it. Flattened, with such ease. All the reasons, they are drowned too, they are saturated, dissolved. They are simply part of where I am. A secluded part of who I am. We all sink, sometimes.

This deep, no other voice can reach.

I must speak with myself.

Is this reversible? Or am I drowned forever?

That will depend on what you choose.

I don't know what to choose. I can't find the right way. I'm lost.

You are not lost. This is part of your path.

How do I stop feeling lost, then?

You are at the centre of your own story: focus on this.

Is that not selfish and is selfish not monstrous?

That is the wrong question. Do you want your story to be a selfish one? That is the correct question.

No. Is my answer. I know that answer.

You know all of the answers.

But it is tiring, knowing what to do. One must make that extra push, and bring it to action. Sometimes: I just want to throw a crisp packet in a hedge. I used to spit chewing gum out of the car window. I miss that: sometimes. In the depths of the lonely ocean, I dream of froth.

There is always dancing, and wearing beads that sparkle in all lights.

Yes, I remember now. And if I were never here, the lightness would mean so much less.

I remember, I regain: swim upwards, laughing.