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And there is nothing, and nothing, and nothing.
In the nothing there comes a pressure like water–
(why is it always water? does it cradle the weight of divinity, let it hang suspended as though in amber?)
– and the pressure is diamond-compressing, is suffocating, is –
Wait.
Wait.
Who's there?
Do not speak to me as though I intrude upon you.
Nothing resolves into a surface to break through. Hands first, then nose, then mouth. Water and seafoam flood into Vessel's mouth and he coughs it out. The world is an ocean, and Vessel climbs out of the water to kneel on waves.
(He is here, and he is back elsewhere; asleep with a blanket thrown over him, IV adjusting the hem over his chest so he stays warm. Vessel's hand rests under his collarbone and recalls the fleeting touch of fingertips pulling the blanket there, and the warmth that coaxed him to surrender, to sleep and to Sleep.)
Sleep moves as a leviathan thing beneath the water. The surface smooths, glasses over like a skin that reflects light, fractal-frozen. The light of the god beneath makes Vessel squint. He is caught in dream-logic, dream-thoughts: the fluidity makes him feel liquid under his own skin. It is vulnerable to be this way, so vulnerable , and Sleep is there, like ink waiting to saturate into him.
(Darling, will you saturate?)
Vessel laughs vaguely, a thin sound. Sleep catches the sound and uses it like a pin, fixing the fluidity of Vessel's thoughts in place.
Look at me.
Vessel's eyes close, open. He looks down and Sleep is an edgeless multitude today, eyes upon eyes, limbs and trunk, a mouth brimming with teeth.
(a moment's fleeting wish: Vessel wants to press his lips to the glassed water, the thin division between him and his god.)
Instead, he leans back and feels dreaming turn to lucidity. His hand drops from his collarbone and folds onto his lap.
"Have I done something?"
You ask that too often.
"You never answer me when I do."
Eyes blink, shift under flesh, move across Sleep's face. Vessel has tried before to write down what he sees when he looks on his god's face, has tried to explain it. But words fail because no logic, dreaming or waking, can describe it. He doesn't think it's a human failing, doesn't even think to blame himself for the difficulty. Sleep is old, older than logic and the solidity of language. Sleep cannot be pinned in place by anything. Vessel wonders if pinning the god would mean the end of what Sleep is, or force the world instead to move around the god, so that logic cannot unravel.
"I was sleeping. Please, what did I do?"
The surface sinks, reshapes. Vessel rides a swell that pulls down concave, walls that rise around him until he is an insect under a glass, caught for Sleep's inspection.
Today was a good day.
"I–"
It's true.
"– yes?"
Sleep's edgeless body contorts, slowly feeding into its own presence. A Klein bottle , Vessel thinks to himself. An object with only one side, one surface, forever entwined upon itself. Sleep's eyes gather, blink, move again.
Tell me why it was good.
Vessel is silent, because if he speaks, his surprise will outpace his common sense. Sleep is…many things. Cold. Distant. (such distance, always.) Sometimes unsure how to speak to Vessel, because they are by their natures unequal, god above adherent. Sleep is beyond him, is older, vaster, more.
An eye fixes on Vessel. The pupil is not black, but the color of absence.
Did you not hear me?
"Yes. I'm thinking."
Think aloud.
There is no urgency in Sleep's voice, no demand. The god always speaks flatly, every word polished and rendered simple so Vessel can understand them. He knows the god speaks in measures from necessity. Vessel cannot parse all of Sleep, even the god's words, unless divinity shapes itself into things he can grasp.
So it comes as a deep shock, a chill in the marrow, when the thought of loneliness occurs to him.
Sleep does not speak to the others. Vessel knows this, has witnessed what little they are able to sense. II has shivered under the pressure of Sleep's proximity before. IV has turned his head to follow a flicker of motion that had no source. III has watched, startled, as a detached shadow licked across the edges of his own. But they don't hear Sleep. And Sleep does not speak to them.
Vessel doesn't understand why this suddenly matters. Why loneliness suddenly fits his god's presence.
He doesn't want to ask.
Instead, again: "Did I do something?"
Teeth grind against teeth. Eyes move. Sleep measures the reply and dulls its sharp edges, saying, Yes. Describe it all to me, this good day, and I will tell you what it was.
A perfect dodge. A request Vessel cannot deny. He sits back on his heels; his knees are aching from kneeling on glass, but he doesn't show discomfort.
"There was…" Vessel pauses, licks his lips. It was just a travel day, as far as he can tell. A day without charcoal and vestments and jewelry hung about his neck like relics, without the cold-clay-warm-flesh of the mask molding to his face. A day when he was not standing between the real and the god, but firmly on the nearer side of the line. Rooted into daylight and a coffee slightly too hot through a paper cup in his hand, watching road signs blur past, a notebook in his lap bearing stippled dots of ink as he tapped a pen to the page.
III off to the side, sitting crunched in the seat across the aisle from Vessel, half-asleep and his head resting on the window (thumping against the window each time tires hit a divot in the road: thump. thump. III doesn't mind this, too fixed in his contortion to move, and Vessel is watching him with each thump , snorting a laugh when one bus-tilting divot makes the thump a thud .
"Fuckin' – ow, dammit. "
"Alright there?"
No reply but a grumble, and Vessel laughing again.).
Eyes move. Pupils widen, constrict. Sleep watches Vessel think, and Vessel can feel his thoughts unspooled for the god, a strip of film the eyes focus on one frame at a time. Teeth mesh together, melt into solidity, the mouth sealing over like a wound.
The cessation of motion. The hiss of hydraulics. People standing, stretching, little snaps and creaks of sinew and bones as bodies are allowed once more to move. Vessel pulling the hood of his jacket over his head - for anonymity, comfort in hiding under the hood, force of habit; he is unsure which. Moving through spaces into somewhere new, journey to destination.
It was just a day, unremarkable and quiet. Vessel doesn't know why Sleep seems so interested in it.
"So what is it I did?"
The mouth reopens, a wound splitting flesh again from the pressure of impatience. Teeth, teeth, teeth, cutting against glass and now Vessel is pushed surfaceward and away.
This was not the right thing to say.
Vessel wakes with a jolt. He sits up straight, grabbing blindly at the blanket as it slides off his chest. The room is unfamiliar until it moves: he is stretched across seats, the world outside bus windows reduced to silhouette shapes and headlights. III curled up on his side across the aisle, head not thumping against the window but pillowed on his arm.
"Alright, Ves?"
IV is leaning over the seat and looking down at him. It's not the first time IV has asked him this, and it has varied in tone too many times for Vessel to count. He nods, rubs his eyes and settles back down.
"Fine. Speed bump woke me."
IV has been awake for as long as Vessel has been asleep, and knows this is a lie. But it's a harmless lie, and there are things IV knows better to question. He hmms , but stands and joins Vessel. Vessel doesn't protest this, making room so IV can sit. III shifts in his sleep; there's a raspy sound, then a deep breath and staying still. Vessel sits up enough to see further down the dark tunnel of the bus: II is a row ahead, slouched in his seat with headphones on, eyes closed.
Vessel leans back. He rubs at his eyes again (he recalls a multitude of eyes with pupils void-dark, watching him watching him what did he do wrong? ), glances over at IV. "Business or pleasure?"
"Felt a chill a moment ago," IV says. Vessel's attempt at joking falls flat, and he looks down. One hand is knotted very tight in the blanket IV laid over him. "Just checking in."
It's not easy, balancing the mundane with what Vessel is. He's wondered before how it doesn't isolate him – isolation he is acquainted with, knows so well, knows how to survive. But the questions he gets are never what he expects. Less of what it all is, but how it affects him. Making sure he's keeping well.
It's odd to be asked such things.
"It's…" Vessel's quiet. IV waits, patiently. The tires hit a pothole and the bus frame rattles in response. "One of those times I don't understand."
IV could make several comments but refrains from them, saying only, "Is it upset?"
"Frustrated," Vessel says. "Things lost in translation."
"Mm." IV leans back, arms crossed loosely over his chest. He glances over at III, who's rolled over in his sleep. Up towards II, eyes still closed and headphones still on. "Alright, that could be worse."
This makes Vessel snort quietly. "True."
"Do you want to…" IV gestures vaguely. Do you want to stay awake ? He lets the trailing silence ask. Do you want me to stay with you?
"No. No, it's okay. Any more bumps and…yeah, maybe then. I'm alright for now."
"Mmhm." IV's wordless replies always carry more weight. He measures his words too, turns feelings and thoughts to hummed sounds and gestures that carry meaning. This one makes Vessel smile, quick and slight. It says to him, Alright. But I'm near if you need me.
IV stands, slips away back into the dark behind Vessel's row. Vessel readjusts the blanket around himself and settles back. The lights passing by outside paint the bus ceiling panels in orange, white, washed out reds and blues. Vessel watches them, broken kaleidoscope shards over the ceiling, until it's shy of dawn and he is asleep again.
There is water again, far from him. There is sand puddled with seawater, sutured with beachgrass at the shoreline Vessel stands on. He steps forward and the ground sinks beneath him, but not enough to stop him.
"I know I didn't say it right," he says. The sky is grey with clouds smeared from horizon to horizon; there's light behind them, but Vessel doubts it's the sun. "I know it wasn't a test or a lesson. I didn't mean to frustrate you."
It has taken a long time to speak to Sleep this way. Without reverence thick enough to choke on, without anger, without confusion. Years have tempered them. Unequal, alien to each other. But still trading words, trying to figure each other out.
Wind ruffles the tufted grass. Stalks rattle together; the noise is thin, skittering. Vessel is sharply reminded of insect legs and turns around, but there is nothing. Only grass stretching to one end of the world, and the shore and the sea stretching to the other. The clouds move slowly overhead; Vessel turns back in time to see something moving behind them. The light moves with it, dips into the sea.
Vessel sits. The ground is waterlogged and he sinks into it a little further.
"We traveled half the day," he says after a moment. "We stopped for an hour outside…I forget which city. But there were mountains off to the left across the road. The air was so thin I was dizzy for a moment."
Silence, except for the movement of the world. Waves breaking over sand. Wind skittering through grass. Vessel looks up and watches the thin grey clouds.
"Lunch. Lunch was good. Stretching and resting from the bus," Vessel continues. He feels foolish doing this, despite it being what his god had wanted. If it's an offering, it's a poor one.
The wind pushes against his back, makes his hood flip up and tangle over his head. Vessel pushes it away and ignores it when the wind instantly flips it back.
"We're almost to the next stop. It's morning there." Here and there, separate. It could be morning forever here but Vessel will never learn to tell the difference. Time shies back from this place. "I…that's all. It was a good day. But only because nothing had room to go wrong."
The wind pushes again. Vessel leans forward, turns to look over his shoulder: Sleep is there in the grass, body a thousand limbs, eyes upon eyes. Sleep breathes out and the wind knocks Vessel sideways. He catches himself before he can hit the ground, pushes himself up.
"Does it matter?" Vessel asks. Sleep blinks; it takes an eternity for every eye to close, to reopen. "Why does it matter to you?"
Because it was quiet, the god replies. Quiet in the world. Quiet from you. The quiet has been more, of late.
Is that not something that matters?
Vessel starts to speak, to question. Then pauses.
"Did you just want to know if I was having a good day?"
Limbs move, rearrange. Eyes focus.
Is that how I should have asked you?
Vessel's mouth moves silently. He blinks, then blinks again. The hubris of his own thoughts makes him shudder: he had thought the god was lonely. But what would be a more reasonable conclusion? Divinity feeling alone despite its own glory, or a passing interest in a supplicant?
But, Vessel thinks. Isn't a god supposed to care enough to ask?
(god oh god but it has taken so long for such a thing, once Vessel would have broken himself apart from the need the gratitude the awe of being seen )
Vessel stands. Eyes follow the movement, pupils restricting, dilating. Watched, and seen.
(IV with a blanket, throwing it over Vessel unasked; half-asleep already and looking up with a wordless sound of a question. IV just shrugging, a faint smile in reply.
"I had an extra. Night, Ves."
Seen. Not watched, not observed. Seen.
Warm under the blanket Vessel wouldn't have thought to get for himself, thin as it was.
A muttered good night in return.)
Sleep moves. The world expands to contain the god, another eternity as an existence logic cannot pin walks-strides-crawls-seethes to the water. Vessel didn't turn but finds himself facing the sea anyway, watching Sleep sink beneath the surface.
The next good day you have, the god says, I will ask about in terms you understand.
It's not a polite farewell, but Vessel takes it for what it offers anyway.
"...sure."
The wind hisses and it is the hiss of hydraulics again. Vessel is curled on his side, the blanket trying to cover all of him. He sits up, rolls his neck and winces as things crackle. Outside the morning is waiting. Vessel stands, tries to shake III awake (III who is sprawled out, arm dangling over the seat's edge, hair somehow tangled like a bird nest. He has a gift for being a mess in the morning).
Nodded good mornings to IV, and to II, who is pushing his headphones off and rising with a groan. IV behind Vessel, shaking III's shoulder again. Vessel has already left the bus; IV looks down and sees the thick tracks of wet sand his trainers left behind.
IV is still for a moment, but then looks out the window. Vessel leans against a telephone pole crusted over with staples and old flyers; hood up, face turned towards the sun. Untroubled.
IV puts away questions that would do nothing but serve his own curiosity. Vessel has pushed away from the pole, following II out of the sun and out of IV's view. He looks down again; the sand remains.
He doesn't ask Vessel about it. II and III didn't notice it. The day goes on, busy and unremarkable, good because things going wrong found no space to intrude.
Better a quiet day than a bad one, as such things go.