#tsv 11

PAIGE: All the time. But I’d still like to try.

We walk awhile in this place, my god and me. Side by side, through the drowning fields, halting as he stops to check upon his sprouting, dripping crops.

He explains it to me, all of it, the great mysteries of living and everything past living, and while the specifics seem to drift just in and out of hearing, and they don’t last in my head a moment longer than they’re spoken…it’s like he’s breathing warmth and comfort into my throat and my belly and my veins.

When he’s done speaking, he turns and walks away. I try to follow him, but the silt is thick and my legs are sluggish.

I call after my god. He doesn’t turn back.

I fumble, falling down onto my knees, slipping into mud that clings and probes upwards and drags downwards.

There’s a sudden, sharp pain from the wound in my shoulder.

I cry out His name, but he’s no longer there to answer me…and then the flood swallows me up, and I drown.

He prunes the stray fingers of the drowned that protrude through the surface. He stretches down to their forlorn, gasping heads and in his kindness, he gives them new legs to scuttle upon.

And when he has finished looking, and sees what he’s made - he smiles with both of his faces.

If you’re lucky enough to catch a glimpse of him in person - if you’re hiding out in the ruins or if you’ve made pilgrimage to see his floods - he will see you. And he will beckon to you.

He will draw you down with him into the depths, willingly or unwillingly, and return you to an ancient shape even your ancestors only halfremembered.

At least, that’s what the Katabasian told me, one morning in the seminary as I sat shoulder-to-shoulder with the other converts, trying not to shift on the hard wooden bench, and all of the students looked bored and tired, as if this was a commonplace lesson they’d heard a thousand times before.

I don’t know how they could all be so confident about the habits of our god.

Because when I asked the teacher if anyone in the room had seen the Trawler-Man incarnate, there was laughter, resounding around the room, and the Katabasian smirked.

And what could I do but laugh myself, shrugging and rolling my eyes at the attention - as if it was inevitable that I, a new arrival whose family did not even come from the faith, would be so clumsy and so stupid, to ask such things.

Hating each one of them, as I laughed along, for making me feel like a fool. For making me feel like I’d never heard his voice myself.

It still doesn’t make sense to me, the claims they made. If the Trawler-Man is hidden from us, and his haunt remains a mystery to the living…then why am I looking at him now? And…why is he smiling?

Why is he smiling?