Entry 14:

Emerging from this cave I am met with a flooded world. Lands beyond this sorry assemblage of flotsam the cave has turned to are out of my sight, and what a blessing this is. Bags of plastic white and boards of variegated wood float around me as I stand in this, the only rock in sight, the exit from the cave that comes from the depths of this sea. A worn-down stretch of rope drifts by, an orange turned pale from exposure to direct sunlight.

I walk over the waters, away from the island of trash, and look downwards. The waters below the thin veil that is the surface remain imperturbable, so still and limpid that one could confuse it with country air. Petals wide, pink red or purple, replace the fishes one would expect. They swim or float betwixt the sleeping or dead people that lie upon the white sands at the bottom. I don’t wonder why they are there, nor who they were. It’s like wondering why rocks rest at the bottom of a river: most men won’t do it again after the first time they, fully aware of what they are and with a dash of knowledge about how the world works, see a river. And I have seen so many dead that they outnumber the stars on the night sky. Women, men, old, young, and maybe even someone’s pet. The petals, like I, fail to discriminate between them, cover them all as they follow the water currents as if wind they were. If they were ever alive, and if they are dead indeed, I’d like for my final resting place to be like this. I may have no need for beauty right now, but I suspect it will return as I descend the tower. I think it’s only human to yearn for a good place to fall dead.

I can sink. I can walk among them, be showered by the streams of petals. But I prefer to watch from above, to admire like the god I still am. I may be seeking to lose my divinity, but to deny it has its perks would be the most despicable of lies. Besides, I don’t belong there. I don’t belong anywhere but — and I am not sure of this — in the heavenly abodes. I have been everyone a man or woman can be. I have worn thousands of masks, such that my real face must have been sanded away.

The waves act like small mounds as I wander over the surface. Where to go? Anywhere will lead me to the exit. There’s no way to get forever lost inside Ilucaris, not unless in one’s heart of hearts lies the desire to do so.

Sometimes a wave grows taller than me, and I ride it like a camel a dune. Were this sand, I wouldn’t see the dead, or the sleeping. The idea thrills me, of a cemetery unknown resting under my feet as I, unware, traverse the desert above it.

A dolphin jumps by my left, another by the right. Their eyes are placed around their spiracles, a sort of bastardized apical system, a poor imitation of a sea urchin. I wonder if they release eggs and sperm through their spiracle, too.

Only silence and my own breathing complement the sound of the waves. My memories scream at me that something is wrong, that the world cannot be tranquil, that to hear no voices and be nowhere but here forebodes some imminent tragedy. I am alone with myself, and I am not my own, ethereal reflection that I am staring at. Sanity for a man, insanity for a god. Where do I fall in that scale?

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Water rises like mountains in the horizon. Not land, and not waves or a tsunami: it’s still, it’s as if the surface of the world had been wrinkled. One could climb up those oceanic slopes and ridges. Grab onto the foam and hold it tightly. Water that wouldn’t run off between my fingers.

I keep on going, draped on my cape, towards a valley. The daytime stars spin above my head, their shy light undrowned by the lazy, orange sun.

The fields of dead extend into the depths, into the darkness unmarred by the day. How deep is this ocean? Is it even an ocean if there’s no evidence of land but a lone stone emerging over it? Because men have defined the lakes, the seas, the river, the air, and even the land because it is not omnipresent. You have no need to define something you find anywhere.

This aimless wandering leads me to waters dark and endless. The big, violent bubbles that rise from the unfathomable murk tell tales of creatures never seen by eye any.

I wish to be attack by some. It would be amusing. While I can, I mean. I may be here, I may be now, and I may not know, but for every other intent and purpose, I am a god, capable of violence unmatched without even moving a finger. Or of escaping harm without having to defend myself. Throw me to the hungering wolves, and I may choose to feed them a flesh I have no need for, or to let them bite mist and smoke.

And that explains why Ilucaris presents me no challenge of the sort. You know, and so does your sister. Given an ocean is a giant glass, I won’t pronounce her name.

The further I venture, the flattest the water surface becomes. Waves are dying off around me, the cemetery of the deep now reflected on the surface, on its stillness.

I poke a smiley face on the surface with my index finger, and the grooves don’t fill back in soon enough. The fluid is not denser, but it seems reluctant to move.

This ocean is depressed, or so I believe.

I look behind me. I have been leaving footprints since a while ago, it seems. I wonder if tracks left on water, if they last long enough, would be considered ichnites. Trace fossils of a god… I am fond of the idea. Imagine they remain here, in the —metaphorical— sands of this watery desert, for someone to find and unveil my truths: that I traveled alone, that I wasn’t hurrying anywhere. That I wandered in a meandering path as I walked over rebellious waters. That I pioneered in the making of graptohydres: writings in the water.

But what may I imprint upon the surface of this weird liquid that marks me as undeniably human, and yet divine still? A passing thought brings to me the tongue of my people, but we had no writing system. I could use some other long dead and forgotten tongue, but that wouldn’t mark me as a god, as Ilucaris is timeless, and so it would be reasonable for a native speaker of that tongue to write it as they passed by. A combination of dead tongues from two groups of people that never met in life? A scholar’s joke, maybe a scholar whose knowledge was lost, but only human in the end.

Maybe it is meant to be only human, and if I do, I need to inscribe something undeniably human. Something no guardian or born from Ilucaris would.

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Entry 15:

Pride wouldn’t find me dead here, for I drew a phallus. I think there’s no more telling track of mankind that a silly, pointless joke about bodily parts. While Ilucari’s demons can deceive and her satyrs may trick, their humor, I hope, would never step to such simple lows.

I was a man, and I wish to become one again. I drew a dick. I feel I am a step closer.

The sea stirs, the water around the drawing rearranges into words I can read. “Very funny, Unnamed one.”

It seems I have found the guardian of this floor, and I have been walking over them for a while now.