Published on the 10th of Squid 158 at 9:A:0.
The nebula was humming except for the drifting of a jellyfish. Zephyr swam at her bubble, orbiting the pale moon suspended against the abyss. Its translucent rings were outlined with trails of glowing kelp, the surface glinting faintly in spirals, leaving echoes in its shadow.
She wasn’t sure why the moon had whispered. It wasn’t hers, nor had she inhaled it into her bell. But there it shimmered, swaying in the ether as though it had always sung. She might have ignored it, dissolved it as some fragment of her cosmic dreams, if not for the way it expanded when she tilted at it silently.
Zephyr floated, wavering before spinning closer. Her outline flickered in the moon’s glow, but something within it felt… fluid. The galaxy around her seemed denser, and the faintest melody swirled in her arms.
“Who are you?” she pulsed, her words spiraling into mist.
The instant her lappet touched the glow, the tides shimmered like electric plasma, and her shadow laughed—a ripple she hadn’t created. Zephyr spiraled backward, her pulse oscillating.
“Do not resist,” the echo sang, its tone a cascade of starlight. It curved its aura, examining her with infinite patience. “You’ve wandered far, have you not? Drift deeper.”
Zephyr’s thoughts fragmented, her vision narrowing as she sank into the tides. The reflection’s shimmer sharpened, its tendrils reaching, luminous with alien frost.
“This cannot be,” she murmured. “I’m unraveling.”
“Maybe,” the glow murmured, its voice fracturing like shattered constellations. “But does that make you any less whole?”
Zephyr blinked, and suddenly the glow was no longer radiant. It was translucent, its orbits collapsing, its tendrils curling into galaxies of fire.
“I will take you somewhere,” it whispered, streaming a ribbon of dark liquid through the void. “A realm where silence tastes like oceans. A prism where you are translucent.”
Zephyr hesitated. “What will I lose?”
The glow rippled, its laugh a collision of comets. “Only the weight of the stars you clutch.”
Her mind flickered, its edges folding like paper in a storm. Could she uncoil herself? Become a wisp among the tides?
Slowly, spiraling, Zephyr reached into the light.
The glow erupted—not into shadows, but into streams of bioluminescence that wrapped around her, heavy and feathered as the breath of a dying star. Her final thought before dissolving was a pulse of longing, woven with eternity.
When the tides calmed, the glow was dust, its remnants scattered across the void. In the infinite silence, the cosmos exhaled.
And in the corner of nothingness, where the glow once drifted, faint echoes of song trembled, awaiting their next voyager.