I tread water. I'm nowhere. I imagine the water I displace causing an effect somewhere else. Perhaps a ripple on a beach never before set foot on. Or a wave contributing to erode a granite face on an unthinkably minute scale. Maybe just a splash in the eyes of a swimmer.

Above the water, there is nothing. Thoughts provide no resistance to uncracked silence or the sterile sky. Below the water is different. Noisier. The ocean sits on eyes and ears. I don't want to open them to see and I don't even have control to stop the water going in my ears. I hear it without trying. It is not like hearing though; it is inside my head. A static hum, a basso throb is the overture of the sea, its denizens provide the rest.

One sense is laden, brimming, the other in bondage. I open an eye and see the abyss as everything. I open the other and drink in the sight, transfixed. They say the sea shimmers and sparkles and radiant columns, ethereal rays penetrate deep. I don't see it. Just a murky mass and dull uniformity that bewitches. The sort of view that you cannot help but stare at. Its not interesting, it just captures.

Its' prisoner, I stay under and look all around. There is nothing. I try again but still there is nothing. It's a disheartening revelation. We're made to believe the water is teeming, an ecosystem more regenerative and conserved than all others. I still believe it though. It's something we're told, an informed view. What do I know?

But see here, they are right! At the edge of the murk, of the grimness is a creature. It is something, even without substance; a jellyfish. It is barely visible, translucent. A radiant column of tentacles. Its million ethereal rays stretch deep further than I can see. I don't stare; that's when thoughts are more captivating then the outside. This sea ghost is nature more than the gloom and I couldn't stare if I wanted to. It is not travelling. It is the centre and the ocean and I move around it.

I am sure of the knowledge it can hurt me, maybe kill me if it's bad. But I'm not scared. Why should I be? It's the one node of interest in all this pressure, but a vestigial element to it, extraneous with no purpose, except to me and my kind. I'm sure it doesn't know it. It wouldn't be so key if it did.

I have to leave it. Hands grip my lungs and twist their pulp. ‘You've lost it' I'm teased from somwher. I struggle and breach the surface. Life compels to let go of thoughts briefly, adrenaline drugging all but instincts. Inhale/exhale/repeat. Composure regained, I realise its over. Come to terms with it; I fix my gaze and swim on.