There are times when one does not understand the season of their life. When the world around seems a whole other, distant vision, where one does not feel a part nor ever the environs. The sea was calm that day, with the sun stroking upon wave like neon might haunt tar, and the sky itself was a giant blue hole, a place that promised nothing but distance. Even the clouds looked alone, they looked out of place. It all looked so staged. So fake. So forlorn.

Wren Juke, why, she brooded did she. Alone on a stone, overlooking the cliff and grasses, small crags and frothing, milling tidepools. Where oh where was the one thing that had felt real been real, nails over anothers fingers, over vest and hat and spines of records; where was this dream'

That day she wrote a little note to Isidore Grey and slipped it into a glass bottle, one she had bought at the Market for the purpose. It was blown in town and of a fine make so it would float her missive to the heart of the sea. It was tapered with a wax seal. The ink would survive, bleed into salt and bluestrains of water, suck down her story to the man and the bottom.

Isidore was in the belly of a whale. And so too, in her own way, was she. Shipwrecked, stowaway, castaway all at once.

But with certainty, and most definitely, not dead!