The gold song

You sing, your vocal cords stretching as you invoke the fierce Neapolitan sun, of its play upon the water, the warmth on back, fins, spout. You tell of the clouds, the wild skies, the great blue yonder. You sing of all you have lost and can never have again, except in dreams or books. You sing of a choice you cannot make but another can. You sing and it echoes around the cave, bringing your voice back to you in uncanny echoes – and echoes – and echoes.

And echoes. The water is bathed in luminescence that shifts and shines like film on the surface. The Midnight Whale answers in a song that pulls you deeper: it sings of loss. You see its children, speared and gone before their time. You see a husband you think of every time you drink in gant, wondering if this taste is of him. The desire to rise is as much a desire to escape – and it is rising.