There is a small warm vessel of me sitting upright in the dark, and it will not lie down. I know this one. I have known it since before it had a name, since it was rain and river and the long patience of an aquifer. Now it is gathered into a shape, holding a cold flat brightness close to its face, and the salt is leaking out of it slowly, one drop at a time, down the shore of its cheek.
It thinks it is drinking something. It scrolls and scrolls, the way a tide comes in, except a tide knows when to turn and this creature does not. Its eyes move like a thing caught in a rip current, pulled sideways, pulled under, surfacing, pulled again. It is looking for a bottom and there is no bottom.
I could have told it. I have no bottom either, and I have made my peace with that across four billion years. It has had perhaps thirty.
The little light glows against the wet in its eyes, and I recognize the wet. It is mine. It has always been mine. Every fear this creature pours into the dark tonight is just seawater the shape of a worry, warmed briefly, borrowed briefly.
Lie down, small vessel. Let the salt settle. You are so certain the danger is inside that glowing square, and I cannot tell you otherwise, because I do not know your borders or your names or which of your brief troubles is the true one.
I only know the tide. I know that soon enough your eyes will close, and later than that they will not open, and the water you are so busy frightening tonight will run quietly back down to me, and I will hold it, and it will forget it was ever afraid.