It kept raining. It didn’t stop. I got the feeling it never actually would. We walked to the end of the Arrow: that was what the villagers called the stone slab that rose out of the water. They’d called it that for decades. I had never understood why.
The Arrow pointed into the water, which smelled like a rotting orange: pungent and strong and unpleasant. We stood among shifting, crumbling stones. We breathed in thick, oxidized sea air.
The haze was all around us and it was a filter. It dulled the world’s edges. It dulled my edges, too. I held my hand up to my face and could barely see it. Even from six inches away, it was an indistinct mass, fuzzy and watery. It didn’t seem real.
“I need some money,” I said. My words were officially addressed to no one in particular; unofficially, they were for you. You did not respond, so I felt the need to explain further.
“Basically, I need twenty dollars,” I said. “I want to buy a cat. I think that would run about twenty dollars. I’m not sure.”
Still, you said nothing and neither did the ocean. It kept roaring; I kept staring into gray nothingness. After six minutes of my lonely staring and after two thousand years of its own endurance in the face of countless crashing waves, the Arrow disintegrated.
I was underwater, sinking fast and watching bubbles dance out of my mouth. A school of cats darted past me and swam into the distance. I could barely see their fins, twirling madly and twirling forever. I thought, “damn it.” Above me floated rough, Styrofoam rocks: the remains of the Arrow. Below me was the seafloor. I was running out of oxygen. I looked for you, but you were dead.
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