Ark

Ark


The classification of light


The light spread over the harbor as if every day began with the same, slightly broken promise. It was a thin golden strip that passed through the gaps of the old warehouses, fell on the sheets of the abandoned shipyards and then was reflected, broken, on the shiny film of water. In this small town, the sound of oars first struck the morning; then came the creaking of the protective doors of the bait boxes, and finally the conversations, whispered at first, as if calculating how much space the human voice should take up in a day that had not yet risen.


Nikos had already set out for his own ritual. His footsteps echoed steadily on the planks of the pier; he lifted the nets onto his back with the ease of a man who knows that he is carrying not only tools but also the rhythm of the place. He was one of those who could tell the direction of the current simply by smelling the air; he didn't need to look at the sky to know if the weather was going to turn bad, he didn't need to put his hand in the water to know the temperature. He just knew.


Near him two young dock workers moved, tying down catheters, adjusting oars, and sometimes laughing the way people laugh before the worries of the day set in. The city functioned with little pauses: a fisherman lit his first cigarette, a woman took out a basket she had washed the night before from a plastic bag, a child ran along the dock holding a gift fishing rod in his hand, ready to believe that the sea would always be there to fill it with stories.


And then, a little further on, Hera.


She didn't need rituals to wake up, because the awakening was already inside her. She was sitting on the edge of a small boat, the one she had converted into a mobile laboratory, and was tying the strap of her mask. The movement was so familiar, so mechanical, that it seemed to be an extension of her thinking. Her fingers were tucked under the elastic strap carefully, as if she were checking every now and then if there was a cracked spot left in the plastic. She wouldn't put up with cracks. Not anymore.


The light licked her cheeks, giving her skin that light glow of someone who spends more time at sea than on land. Her short brown hair was tied in an old knot, so that it wouldn’t fall in her eyes when she entered the water. A thin mark of coral, old, almost faded, stood out near her left wrist. Most had never noticed it; those who had had chosen not to ask.


Her body moved about the boat with that natural flexibility of people who have learned to stabilize their center of gravity on a moving surface. She put the measuring device line in a pocket under the seat, checked her oxygen, and looked out at the horizon. The sea seemed calm, but she had learned that the surface rarely spoke truthfully.


Nikos approached her, carrying the nets on his shoulder.


“In the past, at this time of day, the sea was a deeper color, my girl,” he told her, without looking at her directly; he was speaking to the water, as if addressing the source of the problem directly. “Now I see it and something tightens up inside.” His hand gently patted his chest.


Hera smiled faintly.


"The currents are changing. The temperature went up half a degree this week. It's all adding up, Nikos," he replied.


"You, with those half-assed grades of yours... Maybe you should try a little harder, like the old guys?" he said, laughing. It was only half a joke; his concern was not hidden.


"The eye sees what it wants sometimes. The organs see what is there."


The old fisherman looked up at the sky, as if he wanted to ask something higher about who was right. But then he looked her straight in the eye.


"Be careful down there. The sea, once it grabs you, doesn't let go."


Hera put on her mask. "Reefs are like people, Nikos. Sometimes they hold up, sometimes they break."


"Don't make them human, child. The sea is unforgiving , otherwise the bottom would be full of people ."


She didn't want to argue with him. She knew what he had seen in his life. She also knew that if he said "be careful," he meant it in every way. She let him go, and her boat moved as his passed by. She saw the weight of years on his back; on hers she felt another weight, quieter, more intangible, but just as heavy.


Dive.


The water enveloped her like a world waiting only for her to be completed. The sound of the harbor disappeared, not completely, but as if passing through a filter that held back every human voice and made it distant. Hera let her body descend slowly, with small movements, as if measuring time with the space between two breaths.