+++ The Tide Pool +++ Crawling on hands and knees, through tall grass, first, then through sand and ash, to drink from the edge of the tide pool. While hovering over its empty mirror of glass, an unfamiliar reflection emerges from among the shadows in the shallows, staring back, her eyes deep and darker than the water that surrounds her. You stare into the depths of each other for a momentary eternity and then she slips back down and in again, reaching for you as she is swallowed back into the void, leaving only an oily film that floats atop the water — glistening, glimmering, shining, shimmering, as the water ripples and laps against the tide pool’s edge. You notice the sun upon this certain water refracted, reflecting and pressing against your bare skin, simmering. As the heat on your flesh and the dust in your lungs and the ash in your eyes and the ringing in your ears collectively overcome you, you dive face first into the tepid water, reaching for her, foolishly attempting to grab and pull her from the void, but instead following her, down and nearly into it. Giving up grasping at water, and gasping for air, you roll your body onto the shore, caking your back with sand and ash. You roll yourself over again, onto your stomach, and lift yourself with your arms into a kneeling position, while loose bits of sediment release themselves from your skin and fall upon the ground and into the tide pool, some sinking to the bottom and some floating upon the surface, mingling with the translucent film still gathered there upon the water. As you dust the ash and sand from your body, removing with it the various flora and sediment that has likewise gathered upon your skin, you notice that the film from the water’s surface has not only attached itself to your body, but seems unable to be wiped off, washed off, or otherwise removed by any means short of stripping the skin from the bone. While running your hands over your now glistening skin, you become aware that the pendant you had worn is no longer chained around your neck. Gazing again into the tide pool, you see a faint golden glimmer as the sunlight passes over the deepest waters, momentarily removing the shadows, and replacing them again as it passes. The ringing in your ears returns and brings with it the soft murmur of a strangely familiar voice that you know you’ve never heard before, speaking or singing something slowly, with words indiscernible, the sound situated just below the ringing in your ears. Sweating and light-headed, you lean over the tide pool again. Perspiration builds on your face and chest, dripping small crystalline drops of silver translucence into the water, adding to the film which has gathered and seems to have solidified itself into a mirror. Gazing into it, now staring into your own deep eyes, you lose sight of the golden flicker, buried by water in the depths of the tide pool. After shaking your head in a vain attempt to loose yourself from this aberration, you dive in, shattering the mirror, and your own reflection with it, descending down into the bottom of the tide pool, reaching for your lost pendant, right hand out-stretched, left hand trailing behind. +++ All in line with the oracle, told by tea leaves and tossed bones, writ in crimson ink on ochred scrolls, stored in long-forgotten cellars built from caves beneath the tide pool. +++ C.M.S.