An illustrated account of one cephalopod's journey to somewhere warmer than the trench.
I. Preparations
Home. The trench. Night before departure.
Ollie had been planning this trip for as long as he could remember, which was about three weeks. Cephalopod memory is like that. This didn't trouble him. Three weeks was plenty of time to develop a conviction, and he had developed one: he was leaving.
The brochure had arrived via drift current, waterlogged but legible. It promised warm water, shallow reefs, exceptional visibility, and a continental breakfast. He didn't know what a continental breakfast was. He assumed it was the size of a continent.
He packed with characteristic thoroughness. Eight arms, eight bags — though two of the bags contained only things he was considering bringing. A spare ink sac. A smooth stone. A piece of coral that reminded him of someone he couldn't quite place. He'd decide on the boat. He was good at deciding on boats. He had never been on a boat.
The hat was unnecessary. He'd bought it from a crab near the thermal vents who sold hats and unsolicited opinions in equal measure. "You don't have a head for hats," the crab had said. Ollie was not going to take fashion advice from someone who lived in a discarded tin. He bought the hat. He was wearing it. It was a very good hat.
II. The Dock
Ollie, at the end of the dock. Third Tuesday of the month.
The schedule said noon. He had read it eight times — once per tentacle, he thought, then immediately understood that wasn't how reading worked. But the ritual felt right. He had done very few things for the first time. Living in a trench didn't offer much novelty: the walls were dark, the neighbors were bioluminescent, and the days all looked the same.
He stood at the end of the dock and watched.
The water was the same water that had always been there, but it looked different now, the way a hallway looks different when you're carrying a suitcase through it. It was a road.
A school of fish passed beneath him, going nowhere in particular with great conviction. Ollie had a destination. He'd circled it on his map with a red X — the universal symbol for "something important is here," or possibly "danger," or "buried treasure." Any of those would do.
The sailboat was a small white triangle against the blue, growing slowly into a thing with ropes and wood and a name he couldn't yet read. A pelican stood at the bow like a man who owned something. Ollie waved — arm six, the one reserved for important gestures. The other seven held luggage, or the dock, or a tremble of excitement he was trying very hard not to show.
III. Departure
Somewhere between the trench and everywhere else.
The boat was smaller than he'd imagined and larger than he'd feared. It smelled of salt and rope and someone else's adventures. He settled into the stern with a sound like a rubber glove being pulled inside out, and arranged his luggage around himself in a way that suggested purpose.
He did not look back immediately. There is a technique to leaving: you let the distance accumulate first, so that what you see is already too far away to change your mind about. Ollie knew this instinctively, the way he knew which rocks were safe to sleep under and which ones were only pretending.
When he did finally look, the dock was a thin brown line. The trench beyond it was gone. No thermal vents, no crab dispensing opinions from a tin, no overhang where he'd spent eleven hundred afternoons watching the same dark water fail to become interesting.
Good.
The pelican, still at the bow like someone who had been promoted recently, turned and regarded him with one round eye. Ollie regarded the pelican back. Neither said anything. It was the most productive conversation he'd had in weeks.
The sun was doing something spectacular — all oranges and golds, the kind of light that makes everything look like a memory even while it's still happening. He let two arms trail in the water. It was warm. The brochure hadn't lied about that part.
He still didn't know what a continental breakfast was. He would find out tomorrow. He had all three of his hearts set on it.
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