Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

The snorkle stuck tight to my face leeching the blood from the skin around it; its pressure on my nose left it feeling as though I'd been in a bar fight, and the mouthpiece tore at the corners of my lips. But the water around me was cool, though its salt bit my tongue, and drew tears. And through the plastic goggles what I saw was nothing short of otherworldly.

The Mediterranean spread out before me, duck-egg pale waters stretching away into deep marine. A mere puddle on a world map but here, here it was infinite. I swam out leisurely, further into it, leaving the barnacled legs of the pier behind me until my toes no longer grazed the soft sand beneath me. Through the lens my limbs looked giantesque; they were bathed in rippling, dancing light. I could feel the water all over my skin; I could hear the ocean sounds, of nothing, and everything, all at once. My hair fanned out around me like fine seaweed, golden brown.

I was swimming out a little further, scanning the sea bed for anything of interest, though nothing in particular. Then I saw it, in the periphery. A dark shape on the pale sand, no more than several feet away.
A turtle.

It didn't move. It just looked up at me with one big black eye. It was large, and it looked old. Its shell was dotted with barnacles and its leathery face was scared. Perhaps the way its beak curved gave it a refined air, or perhaps the way its black gaze seemed to hold the world within it. It did not break its stare, nor did I mine though my eyes were growing red from the salt. It stayed still as a rock; I flailed a little in the gentle waves, as an anemone might. I wondered what it was thinking, this age old sage, as it gazed up at me, an enormous pink being, flailing against the ocean's warped glass ceiling, glowing white.

Suddenly something grabbed my ankle; I flipped and turned under water, sucking searing salt water into my mouth. I reached the surface, thrashing and spluttering, to the sound of laughter. My father, laughing, wet hair flat against his forehead. I wrenched out the mouth piece. "There's a turtle! I was watching a turtle!" But when I dived back beneath the water it was already swimming away, with surprising speed, into the distant blue.

I was angry with my father, but that encounter stayed in my mind for a long time afterwards. The serenity of it. The way time stood still. I have never known such peace in all my life, than those minutes spent looking into the great black eye of the infinite sea.