He was cradled for four months. Between waves, between water and sky, between the stars and the sun and the moon. He was rocked back and forth, back and forth, awake and asleep, asleep but awake as her blood spilled over his hands again, again, again.
For four months, he could not stomach the sight of himself. He lay in his cot, listened to the waves whispering outside, and tried not to be in his right mind. He tried not to be that man who ruined his own world. He tried to be a shell, rocked on the waves. He tried to sink to the bottom of the blue ocean, to be covered by ancient sand, washed over, forgotten. Lost.
He wouldn't eat, at first because he had no appetite, then, a week later, because it seemed wrong to make himself survive when he hadn't let her do the same. It was immoral, indecent. If she was wasting away in the desert, he ought to waste away in the sea. He nearly succeeded. Foreign hands and voices drifted in and out of his world, until they became real, slaves pouring water down his throat and stuffing cracked, dry bread into his cracked, dry mouth. He was too weak to fight them. It was horrifying to know there was someone on this ship who cared enough about him to keep him alive. Vasey. The snake, curling back into his stomach. The black hand over his mouth and nose, the veil over his eyes.
Slowly, the ocean turned from turquoise into ink. The ship sailed west, but the water was directionless, and it carried him to false places, half-dreams, achingly endless horizons. He stared at the sky some nights to find her eyes. Each morning the sun burned her away. The ocean remained. Wave after wave after wave, and there was no relief.
He was cradled for four months. In his room, in the dark, listening to the water beat against his wall, trying to be a shell, trying not to see her face, trying to be lulled by the sea into its forever, limitless places. Failing. Opening his eyes, and there she always was.
Always at his side. A woman in white, clothed in the sea, radiant in the sun, dying in his bed while the ocean rocked them back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.