That is not quite correct. Redana has imagined the sea before. The sea is vast and still and contains both wonders and horrors within its depths; it is a motif in the Pelagic Hymns. In her imagination it is dark and colorless, water piled upon water, and Poseidon keeps all that lies below. There are horses that live in it. And her mother took the sea and reclaimed its depths, filtered the waters in great supply-vats until they ran sweet, turned the hidden places of Poseidon into more residential space, and sacrificed something unspeakable to Poseidon so that the skies above would not drown Tellus in retaliation. The sea once was; then it was remembered in song; and now it is here and she was wrong, she was so wrong, because the sea [i]shines.[/i]

It’s like the sun is [i]leaking[/i] and light lies slick on the water, unwilling to come close to the shore, because that’s where Poseidon’s horses are. She can see them now; she has that much imagination. The tossing manes, the rushing hooves, the leap and the break and the charge. And then there’s nothing left and the water runs back down leaving the sand black with absorbency, black as the shadows in that one poorly-lit bathhouse near the gymnasium, black as Bella’s hair. Then the charge back up, foaming, ferocious, coming almost up to where she stands in her tall boots.

Her chest is ever so slightly tight, and it hits her after a few more waves that this is why poets are always saying beauty leaves one breathless. It’s as if her body knows just as much as she does that this moment is special, that the processes of her must still until she can be sufficiently quiet, until she can remember this moment until she’s three hundred: the light-spill and the horse-foam and the roar, roar, roar, like the breath of Leviathan, which is a metaphor she now understands, too[1]. Like she can feel its breath on her skin. Like she stands before something alive in a way that resplendent multicolored space is not, for all that it is the art of the gods, for all that she loves it. The sea is not space; the cat is not the painting.

And when she looks up! When she stares at the clouds, actual discrete clouds, it makes her feel as if they are standing very still and she is moving beneath them instead, as if she is watching the rotation of this planet in real time. And between them, empty blue, and how is it that she does not take a step forward and tumble forever into it? It seems more present and fearful, a more certain place to drown than the ever-moving waves. Perhaps that is why Poseidon rules all seas.

Iskarot will need to try to get her attention three separate times; she is lost in worship. [i]Poseidon, horizon-strider, earth-breaker, glory be to you, who knows what lies beneath the deep places of the waters. You who delight in the armored hosts, the silver-scaled armies; you who tamed Leviathan and made the waters salt. To you I sing, keeper of what is known not.[/i]

***

[1]: like the best metaphors, Leviathan is entirely real. But don’t tell Redana that yet. She is very proud of her discoveries in literary criticism today.