It devoured my body. I found myself endlessly falling, but as gently as a petal whisked off a flower. My limp body felt no burden, yet I attained substance enough to sink. When the wave washed over and pulled me into the current below, I knew that I had lost the chance to escape. The cold slapped me across the face like a friend holding a grudge. Everything went dark, and I felt myself drift away from the shoreline of consciousness.

I woke as the water filled my lungs. The water was inhaled as easily as oxygen. I could still breathe. But I was okay, I was okay. I sought for something else to reassure me. Something to place me and tell me where I was and what was happening. I did not know yet, but the answers were buried in the depth of the forgotten city. And there was me, pit-falling towards it.

I sunk my toes into the sandy surface beneath my feet. The walls of the city didn’t have much remaining structure, and the deep ocean creatures languidly stirred in response to the whim of the current. Feeling a presence of familiarity, I glanced in all directions and realized that I knew where I was. Because laid before me were the ruins of the ancient city that went missing so long ago. I had heard many stories about it. I thought those stories were simply told to amuse children. No, they were telling the truth.

I entered the city. The sandy ocean floor was covered in chips of rocks and crumbled building materials. I walked into a house that had once hanging flower planters now tossed across the sand in every direction. The roof and side of this building were damaged, but I continued walking through the open space. I stepped through a doorway, past some debris that had been washed against an old internal wall. Rubble accumulated in piles in corners. The house was not only comfortable for the creatures of the sea who had invaded and made this their home but had a warm presence.

I stepped outside the house to find a young girl staring up at me with big blue eyes and freckles dusted upon her cheeks. She hesitated, and then wrote in the sand, “Why are you back?”