Into the depths

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The tips of her toes leave the surface of the water. The last of her body to feel the air. As she submerges into the water. Diving into the darkness. Her feet gracefully slide from air to water with barely a splash. Her eyes close as she begins the descent. She automatically pushes her arms in front of her to carve through the body of water she has found herself in. To propel herself deeper.

She opens her eyes. Just as her arms start another stroke.

Fingers pointing in the direction she is going. Arms straight. She pauses for a moment. Trying to work out what she is seeing. The two fish. Her guides. Her reason for diving. Are there in the distance. Where has she seen them before? There is something familiar about them. She cannot place it in this moment.

The water is deep, dark and murky ahead. And her arms, are scaled. This is perplexing.

It is like someone has drawn a mirror image of the half moons of her nails, underneath each nail bed. To form a perfect circle. And then, continued with the mirrored half moons along each of her fingers. Over the tops of her hands. Along her arms. Each half moon nestling into another. Forming a scaled pattern.

She examines her arms. Stretching them out in front of her. Noticing the peridot green colour of them. The way they catch the light streaming in from up above. From the surface, which is not a short distance away. Looking backwards towards the light, she can just make out the blurry image of the giant tree, resting on the bank. On the water’s edge. On the earth’s edge. She is not sure which. The tree she was just a moment ago, sitting under. She can make out the shadow of the tree on the water’s surface. Like a reflection. Like a mirror. She is underneath it. Looking behind its shadow.

Turning. Looking forwards and away from the light, she notices the fish have also paused. Waiting for her. Nothing but darkness behind them. She can barely recognise her body. Covered in scales from her collar bones and over her breasts, to below her navel, where the scales change proportion and shape to form a magnificent tail. Her feet. Her toes. Have disappeared. In scales. And a tail fin.

She pauses. To take this in.

And watches as the tail swishes through the water. Almost like it has a mind of its own. Moving effortlessly. Creating the shape of infinity as it moves. The tail rising up and around to form the curve of a sideways eight. To then dip down before rising up again to make the mirrored curve on the other side. She can feel a connection with the movement of her tail. In her chest.

And then it hits her. She is breathing underwater.

But with this awareness comes panic. And she starts gulping at the water. Creating a frenzy of bubbles to rise to the surface. Meeting their fate as they touch air.

Instinctively, she stops moving. Stops struggling. Stops gasping for the lightness of a different kind of current than the heaviness of the water all around her. Where her futile efforts will be just that. Unrewarded. She gives in to the water. Lets it have her way with her. With her lungs. With her body. And slowly. She sinks deep into the darkness. Where eventually she lands on a bed of sand.

The two fish, previously her guides, now follow her to where she finally rests.

And they wait. Time is of no consequence.

This is a slither of draft from a chapter in the graphic novel I am writing with A Wandering Mystic. Discover more Conversational Alchemy at medium.com and @conversational.alchemy