Walking on Water
There was not much farther to go, twenty meters or less, when I was suddenly confronted by the sight of Christine and the boat clearly reflected in the water before me, surrounded by the clouds that dotted the sky above the far horizon. I spent a spellbound moment staring into this seeming mirror until I yelped my delight. I had found the curiously still patch of water! Christine lifted her head at this commotion, must have imagined I’d gone nuts, making a child’s bath of the otherwise serene waters. I stopped, the ripples subsided, and her inverted image reappeared, hanging on to the hull for dear life lest she plummet heavenward. The illusion brought the remembrance of that morning in El Vado when Karen had me staring at the half-Moon in the oceanic sky overhead and I was taken by the sensation that I would fall into it. Christine surely felt a creeping sort of vertigo as she crawled to the stern and firmly grasped the upturned screw propellers, still watching me, aware that the cause of her misfortune might be hidden just beneath me. I resumed swimming to her, this time doing the breaststroke, and with each movement of arms and legs warmer water came welling up from below. Startled, I halted again to tread water and immediately scared myself silly, finding solid ground under my feet! Then, certain that Fata Morgana and the Regulus effect were not conspiring to deceive me, to drag me under as soon as they had my confidence, I laughed. Christine’s sullen gaze from behind the propeller blades quickly became one of wide-eyed, slack-jawed wonderment as I again started in her direction. With the Sun at my back I must have been quite a sight for her, a marvel to behold, as I arose from the Sunrise Sea as if on a staircase until I stood over her, in water only up to my ankles, beckoning her to come to me.
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