A Study in Drowning

When the king was first interred,
He did not dream at all.
It was the abhorrent nothingness
That cast a dreadful pall.
That bleak and black oblivion
Was too much like death to bear.
And so the dreams came like a balm
For the half-dead king’s despair.
From “The Dreams of a Sleeping King” by Colin Blackmar, 193 AD

I can hear the mermaids singing
Beneath the rolling, wanton waves,
Their hair as lush as meadowsweet,
Their maidenheads as ripe for plunder
As the gold inside their sunken chests.
From “Great Captain and His Sea-Bride,” collected in The Poetical Works of Emrys Myrddin, 196–208 AD

What is a mermaid but a woman half-drowned,
What a selkie but an unwilling wife,
What a tale but a sea-net, snatching up both
From the gentle tumult of dark waves?
From “Elegy for a Siren,” collected in The Poetical Works of Emrys Myrddin, 196–208 AD

Storytelling is an art deserving of greatest reverence, and storytellers ought to be considered guardians of Llyrian cultural heritage

Before the ocean is friend or foe, it simply is. And so are you.

How terrible, to navigate the world without a story to comfort you

Effy laughed again. “I thought you weren’t a romantic.”

“I wasn’t,” Preston said, cheeks still pink. “Until you

You don’t have to take up a sword. Survival is bravery, too.”

What wisdom do you want from a death-marked girl? I can say only this: In the end I learned that the water was in me. It was a ghost that could not be exorcised. But a guest, even uninvited, must be attended to. You make up a bed for them. You pour from your best bottle of wine. If you can learn to love that which despises you, that which terrifies you, you can dance on the shore and play in the waves again, like you did when you were young. Before the ocean is friend or foe, it simply is. And so are you.

The weight of a memory is one thing. You get very used to swimming with it
dragging you down. Once it’s loosed, you hardly know what to do with your body. You don’t understand its lightness.”