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The boy was jolted to fearful alarm, burning heat broke on his skin, as still he stared. Behind her white, nude form, the far wall erupted in rushing torrent of water. The liquid flooded over the wall, covering the stone with layers of distorting ripples, seething roar drowning out the desperate voice of his mother. John watched her mouth move, calling his name, with distant curiosity. Rising rapidly, in a quarter minute the water covered his mother’s figure. She sank beneath the surface, pale skin refracting deathly white under the water, turning green, then blue beneath the distorting lens of the element, until sight of her at last disappeared.

The surface of the water, moments later, was not more than a foot from his face, as though a great wall had thrown itself up before him. He saw his reflection staring back from the water, calm, impassive, unblinking, and placed the tiny model in the center of his reflected forehead. Great ripples expanded outward, distorting his visage. Pulling his hand away, the ship caught fire, its tall masts consumed by bright amber flame, a signal, a pillar of fire on the slate-like canvas of dark blue water, lit by points of seeming reflected moonlight.

Slowly the ship and its light grew smaller, alike the ripples of the water, as though the surface was moving further away. It pulled back, pulled back, bright light of the ship’s flames reduced to tiny flittering head and tail swimming against the textured waves of moonlit ocean, then penetrating the depths, until his reflection seemed spread miles across a miniature sea, as though his head were the great moon gazing on the still and tranquil deep. He saw the detail of the waves as giant swells moved silently across the surface of his reflected visage.

He woke.

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