I was standing near the prow, doing my best not to lift my arms and shout that I was the Queen of the World. Or, perhaps more accurately, Queen of the Underworld.
I stood there, holding onto a post, and stared out at the rolling sea. Heavy fog hung low over the water. The sea itself was slate gray and seemingly impenetrable. At the most, I could see down only a few feet. Nothing seemed to exist near the surface. No dolphins nor seals nor killer whales. The Puget Sound seemed devoid of life. Just a vast expanse of churning, dead, gray water, a barrier between islands. A great moat, perhaps.
Which didn't make it any less beautiful. On the contrary, I lived a dozen or so miles from the ocean, so it wasn't often that I found myself bouncing along a fast-moving boat, through a heavy fog, hundreds of feet above the ocean floor.
Tara was sitting with the captain, and Allison was below deck, battling seasickness and failing miserably. Last I heard, she was introducing herself to the tiny metal toilet attached to the main sleeping quarters below deck. The boat itself sported a bedroom, a living room, and a galley. The boat was cozy and was captained by a smallish man with a biggish beard. He could have been Ahab in another life. Or perhaps even the white whale.
With that thought, I thought of Ishmael.
No, not the Ishmael from Moby Dick.
Ishmael who had been, at one time, my guardian angel. And who was now...I didn't know.
An interested suitor? Maybe, maybe not.
I didn't know much, but I did know one thing: my life was weird.
Sometimes too weird.
Sometimes I wanted to bury my head in the sand, or leap, say, from this boat, and drift to the ocean floor and exist in silence and peace, with the crabs and bottom feeders. Except I couldn't run away from what I was, or what my children had become. What they had become because of me.
Suddenly, panic and dread and a crushing fear filled me all over again.
Breathe, Samantha.
I did so now - slowly, deeply, filling my useless lungs to capacity with air that I didn't need - at least, not in the physical sense. Emotionally, maybe.
As I focused on my breathing, as the cold air flowed in and out of my lungs, in and out of my nostrils, I had the distinct sensation of being out of my body. I hadn't planned to be - who planned that sort of thing, anyway? - and hadn't even expected it. One moment, I was concentrating on keeping calm, focused almost entirely on the process of breathing, and the next...
The next, I was...elsewhere.
Not literally, for I could hear the roar of the boat's motors, the wind thundering over my ears, the water slapping against the hull. Yes, I could feel and hear and smell, but I was not there. Not in the boat.
Then again, maybe I really was nuts and was sitting in some insane asylum.
Maybe the doctors had just given me my latest dose of zone-out meds.
Do not be so hard on yourself, Samantha Moon.
Was that my voice? Had I made it up?
I wasn't certain. I did know that the sound of the ocean and the boat and the wind seemed to be fading even further away.
Although I felt detached from my body - hell, from reality - the voice was, to say the least, a welcome sensation.
Very good, Samantha Moon.
The thought was not my own, I was certain of it.
No, not so much a thought as a voice whispered just inside my ear. I was very familiar with such telepathic communication...but this communication seemed different somehow. It almost seemed to come from inside of me - and around me and through me, all at the same time.
A good way of looking at our communication, Sam.
I was also certain I'd heard the voice before, as I'd sat upon a desert ledge, back when I'd let my mind drift and found myself in a deeply meditative state - and in the presence of something very loving.
And seemingly all-knowing.
All-loving, Samantha Moon.
I continued holding onto the post as my knees absorbed the rising and falling of the boat. But I wasn't on the ship. No, not really. I was elsewhere. Above my body.
In a place nearby but not nearby. I struggled for words, searching for an explanation to where I was. To what was happening to me.