From her vantage aboard the rocking deck of that small craft, the twin brackets of dead blue sky and bruised purple sea meld at an indeterminable point and form the endless void that holds her at its centre. The little lights catch the lazy waves sloshing against the hull, frothing at the crests like wet jaws.
Here she understands her smallness. The vast heavens above are as unreachable and unapproachable as the fathomless depths below and utterly inhospitable to human life. Their conjoining spheres will not allow her to see under their influence, let alone breathe. But they are not cruel like the ravenous brutality of nature or as malicious and psychotic as the ravages of man. No. They are both entirely indifferent to her and unable to ever comprehend her, or anything within them, or each other, or themselves.
The sky and the sea. Twin abysses. Deadly. Uncaring. Concealing horrors beyond comprehension.
And yet.
She reaches out a hand and her fingers curl around the darkness ahead.
No greater journey exists than across those waves and through those stars. No greater beauty or terror can be found. No greater meaning, in life, can be captured.
It is all there is. The unknown. The unconquerable. Only witnessed by the unbroken.
Paddy Dobson
17th April 2022