Below the Waterline

The cavern is not a room, not really, but a ribcage of wet slate and dark water, curving up into a ceiling lost in the grey silt of the air. The walls breathe. I can feel the slow, tectonic expansion against my back, a rhythmic heat that smells of brine and old iron. It is dark enough that my eyes have stopped trying to find edges, settling instead on the rough texture of the stone and the sound of the tide pushing up from the deep. We are below the waterline, where the city’s weight is just a rumor and the leviathan’s sleep is the only law.

I am sitting on a flat shelf of rock, my charcoal stick hovering over the parchment spread across my knees. At forty, I have learned that my joints complain before the weather changes, and right now my left knee is singing a sharp, bright note about the damp. I don’t rub it. I adjust my grip on the charcoal, the wood smooth and worn from use, and look up.