Here is a new vessel, so small the whole of it would not fill a tidepool, and already it is nearly all me. I know my own weight anywhere. I feel it in the little warm thing the larger creatures pass so carefully between their arms, tilting, cupping, as though it might spill. It might. It is barely sealed. I have not yet decided how long to let it hold this shape.
The large one that carries it is leaking from the eyes, giving me back a few drops at a time, salt calling to salt. I taste no difference between what runs down its face and what I threw against the cliffs this morning. It is all the same water. It was always going to come home; it has simply taken a detour through this trembling new body, this fist no bigger than a mussel, curling and uncurling around nothing.
They make sounds over it. Soft ones. I do not know what the sounds are for. I know only that the small vessel breathes now in a rhythm I taught to every living thing that ever waded out too far: in, and hold, and give it back. In. Hold. Give it back.
They think they are holding something new. I have held this water since before their first shore had a name, and I will be holding it long after the tide has taken the shore back. For now I let them cradle their small warm portion of me, and I lie flat and patient at the edge of their world, the way I lie at the edge of every world.
I am in no hurry. Everything that is carried is carried toward me.
I only have to wait for the drops to remember the way down.