Dearest Laura, I am certain that this letter will not reach you as I do not intend to send it by any conventional means or anything that has even been presented to me implicitly or explicitly as a method of sending letters. Rather I will hand it to the captain and with his foul black teeth he will no doubt devour it as I have seen him do so many times when my fellow crewmen brought him letters or what I assume to be letters. I have not asked them what they were and they have not told me, though if I did, I cannot imagine I would find their answer enlightening as in my time aboard the Fimbriae they have consistently had the opposite effect. Perhaps that is a part of the ″here″ as opposed to the ″not-here″ but also ″not-there″ I find myself in currently, that I have managed to cling onto: The idea that anything one does with a letter would be in pursuit of sending it. No matter how absurd. You must think me a madman Laura, and I have learned that I am, though I did not know this fact when I first boarded; that I belonged here. The first time it really sunk in, if you would pardon the playfulness in my words, was three cleanings ago. An interval which I believe to be similar to a week in length, despite mealtimes being erratic and the sun not setting on this strange ocean, which makes any measurement of time close to impossible. That day, and I only use the word day out of habit, I drowned. It was the oddest sensation when I woke up in my cabin, unable to breathe or to see clearly and with that pressure acting on my body from all sides. I do not remember feeling cold, be that result of the panic that quickly overcame me or another impossible quality of these waters, which to understand I have given up a while ago. What I can say with certainty though is that it was bright as day in my water-filled cabin. It is never dark on the Fimbriae. Spiraling into a primal fear as I had never felt it, I ripped open the door and rushed onto deck, which as I could then clearly see was facing downward, sails and all, while the surface lay calmly above us. One does not sink without noticing, I am sure I don′t have to tell you, but the strangest thing yet was that we had not sunk. We were simply sailing mirrored, clinging to the surface as physics should not allow and all the crew and the captain were standing on deck, feet pointing upward like myself and laughing. Harty, jolly laughs that should be unnerving like everything in this situation, but they actually made me feel at ease. The butcher looked at me expectantly and so I too started laughing as my lungs filled with water. There was nothing magical about it in this regard, my insides burned and after a while my heart came to a stop but we continued laughing while the water below us slowly drained up into the sky above and we were exposed to the air again. The ship did not flip though. I swear to you Laura that the Fimbriae did not flip, that we are still the wrong way around while all of the water is in the sky now. I still feel downward and my heart has only recently started beating again, though only sometimes and only tentatively. I am sure I will have to die many more times before I have shed so much of the ″here″ in me that I might leave this liminality into a proper ″there″. Though should my journey have been worthwhile, I am sure I will reunite with you in this mystical place alive as I ever was. Be safe and prepare for the tragic case that I do not return. With love, Michael
Dearest Laura, I abuse your name once more in a message that will only ever see the captain′s insides though I have witnessed many more strange occurrences aboard the fimbriae which I feel I must get off my chest in writing. It is not that I still foolishly believe in a magic that would bring these letters before you, but the events following my ″sending″ of the last message have inspired me to continue doing so regardless. Besides, the idea of you comforts me greatly on these unearthly waters. The captain′s breath was a foul thing. Worse than I could have imagined and though he did not speak, from his eyes I could see that he derived a perverse pleasure from chewing the ink-soaked paper. I cannot put what it is that I felt into words beyond the fact that it came with an overwhelming feeling of weightlessness, as though he had with the letter consumed a part of myself that had weighed upon me and at the same time a great exhaustion that I had never felt from any of my physical labor aboard the fimbriae. I must have stood there for minutes in that waft of decay, attempting to make sense of my thoughts when the butcher patted me on the back and took me below deck for a card game with some other crewmen. I neither knew nor understood the game and looking back on it, I cannot imagine it had rules though it did a great deal to lighten my mood. I have played similarly unfathomable games multiple times since and they must have always happened though only after delivering the letter was I invited. The crew rarely speak and scarcer yet are the times they make sense, though despite this oddness and their great number and changing faces, I believe that I love each and every one of them greatly. While it is the butcher who was first to become more than merely a face within the mass, our contact never grew beyond the introductions he made for me. For the seamstress it was a different story. She was revealed to me as such when I complained about the itchiness of my clothing, which had by then been stuck to my skin for far longer than I am comfortable admitting and began turning a frightful shade. I told her that washing the old cloth would be perfectly enough, but she insisted on her usefulness and asked me if I did not feel they were restrictive. By this I was taken aback, as I had always considered what I was wearing to be quite practical work clothes, a basic layer of protection that never got in the way of my chores, though the moment the words left her lips I knew them to be correct. Yes. Yes they were restricting. And so with a kind smile the old woman took my only remaining possession and left with it, returning shortly after with a long, dress-like robe. This and nothing more, though I knew it was too late for questions and that I had made my bargain so I accepted graciously. I remain unsure though, as to whether I had paid for the dress with my clothes or paid for the disposal of my clothes with the indignity of wearing the dress. I must make sure not to portray her as unkind despite the way these words may be construed. She merely followed my request and I did not ask for our exchange to be undone as I did not realize how freeing it was to feel the wind on my skin with every movement. Certainly no less cryptic, but clearer in his actions was the wincer whom I met two cleanings later, though to say this is not quite correct, as the moment I approached him, I recognized his face as that of one of the men who laughed with me when I drowned for the first time. We exchanged knowing looks and it was quite nice to have this man as a constant in the sea of ever changing faces. I do not know how it works, but crewmen undoubtedly leave and appear without us ever docking. The mechanism of this is the next mystery I shall set my attention to, though at this point I was preoccupied with the question of food and drink, more specifically the absence of the first and impossible abundance of the latter. As with everyone on the fimbriae, I cannot claim that I knew him to have answers, knew him to be involved in any way, the only thing that made me attempt to introduce myself to the wincer was a deep seated feeling that such was what I was supposed to do. I say ″attempt″, since this was the first time I realized that I did not know my name. The situation was quite terrifying, you can surely believe; to stand there stuttering and gesticulating in a vain effort to accomplish the mundane in a place that was fundamentally not and starkly opposed to the very concept. He nodded, the pain of a recent scar flaring up in his eyes and told me that he was the wincer and that I surely also had filled a role once. At this the tension dissipated somewhat and I could calmly reply that I was the salesman and that I wanted to know if he had ever eaten aboard this ship. Unsurprisingly he had not, much like myself and he too did not feel hunger though this fact seemed to worry him significantly less than it did me. I explained my theory on the time between cleanings and that our survival should be an impossibility considering how many of them we had seen. This incredulous smile crept across the wincers lips when he refuted without care for my mental state my last foothold in the world of measures and objects. Would it not be quaint if they were regular? What a funny coincidence that would be. He also preempted my next question, that about the alcohol, which was always available and consumed in great quantities without drying up. Here the man whom I had just placed as the only sane one beside me preferred to explain by demonstration as he cut across his wrist and allowed the brilliantly deep stream of red to flow into an open barrel placed before him as though prearranged for my arrival. Even being aware of their existence, I had never known someone who sought their own destruction, yet in this moment′s unfitting serenity I could not make of him a suicide. There was a greater tragedy to the endless smooth pour of life essence from his veins and the detached reflectiveness of his gaze. Perhaps I must admit once more a concerning curiosity on my part as it took the barrel′s almost complete filling for me to inquire if he could continue doing this forever. The idea had long since solidified in a dark corner of my mind that I was watching the production of our limitless wine and he affirmed with a nod, recalling that this was why he came aboard the fimbriae; that he could bleed and bleed and therefore never truly sacrifice. That all he gave and did would always be naught but a farce because he could simply keep bleeding. While I could not find the meaning in his words, the sobbing tone of the wincers voice appeared to me as a cue to politely leave. Had he allowed me to get away so easily, I would perhaps not be writing this. Perhaps. But to my great misfortune I was able to make out the question he asked as I left: ″Why did you come aboard this ship, salesman? You must know.″ Dearest Laura, I fear very much that I do With love, The salesman
Dearest abyss of continuous dissolution and reconstitution of fragments, Dearest acidic viscera bridging the sargassian void between the world and itself, Dearest ocean, My writings have been well received by their absence and I can only consider such a thing tremendously joyous as I believe it to mean that my journey aboard the Fimbriae will soon reach its terminus. In my dreams (I find it magnificent to have regained my capacity for them) the land has already revealed itself to me, hiding away only just below the horizon, biding its time as I bide my lack of it. The world of the restless resting mind must sound an odd thing to be excited by in my age but perhaps you can see that no one who does not have these waters within them could possibly understand the comfort it brings to call a dream a dream with certainty. I can not say whether the day I boarded was a dream, but I must admit that I find it difficult to think of it as real after so long. The colours were wrong, the air lacked its acrid saltiness that precipitates in crystalline scales on every surface and the people had simultaneously too many faces and too few. Except for one man. One man had in his long life found the right amount and he was beckoning me toward him as I went about my day. He was an odd fellow, perfectly unremarkable and quiet. Inoffensive. Thinking back the only thing I remember is that he looked somewhat like myself, but not more so than most. I had not realized it in the crowd, but once I stood before him his ship also revealed itself to me. It was superbly anachronistic, this thing, reminding me of the pirate vessels of old with its age darkened wood and billowing sails, characters so intricately cursive that I could scarcely read them burned into the hull proclaiming the ship ″Fimbriae″. An odd name, I mused, aware of its meaning in the scholarly Latin but far from knowing it with my bones as I do now. Did you know that sometimes the sea curls? It took me a while to notice and I cannot describe it better that that, but I have learned to pay attention those times the Fimbriae receives new crew, when the water moves around in place and the ship stops. I have not lied to you before, we do not dock, have never docked, but on those occasions we throw rope off board and men and women will climb up from the depths to join our ranks as though it were perfectly natural. Perhaps it is. Perhaps I was the apparition or perhaps I too came from the waves and have merely forgotten. We, a party which has only recently started to include myself, greet the new arrivals warmly and they assume their posts without need for instructions or explanations, the luxuries of land that are here considered superfluous. Though I have given up faith in my counting, it happens from time to time that one of my friends chooses to make the even more astonishing journey in reverse, to climb down into the glowing waves and vanish beneath them never to return. It is an odd thing to see and I can only implore you to look closely should you ever see the ocean curl, although it hurts the mind and although it might only occur in these waters. My doubts extend to the unsettling idea that perhaps the Fimbriae does not stop then the waters do, but that the ocean itself stops with the ship or never moves at all. Being the salesman, I asked the figure on that dock, the man who looked so much like me, what they transported and if I could buy it off them, but he only chuckled and claimed that the Fimbriae carried solely that which could not be sold and that which was already at sea. Thinking he was merely posing a cryptic riddle the way lonesome merchants are occasionally prone to, I stepped aboard to look at the goods for myself and possibly negotiate with someone who found it within themselves to speak plainly, something which should come as no surprise I did not accomplish. And might never again. For all the strangeness of the Fimbriae′s crew and the waters it sails, I have come to profoundly appreciate how normal a ship it is in its age. The beautiful beast in whose belly we dwell requires cleaning and maintenance and the occasional repair when something breaks like any vessel might. Not that I would dare consider myself an expert of course but these sensible chores strike me as almost humorous in how mundane they are, like a deliberate kindness to entertain the crew and give them purpose. Contrarily, the circumstances under which the fimbriae sustains damage are nonetheless rarely such that could rightfully be called normal and when I one day had to close a gap in the ship′s railing, the sea made no efforts to soothe my mind with the appearance of rationality. I believe it was warmer than usual on the day on which the carpentress broke away a few planks from the ancient railing that previously stopped careless crewmen from falling overboard and began fashioning a makeshift lifeboat from them using nothing but her teeth. By now you will have correctly assumed that I merely watched her process in disbelief as is my nature rather than intervene before asking her if she could not simply return to the waters as so many have, half knowing that she would throw the question back at me. She did, but I have come to accept this tedious manner with which all the men and women here speak when I recognized it in myself and arrived at the painful realization that I was in no way out of place or unusually ignorant. Like the others I know what I must do but nothing of the ″why″. The carpentress forgave me a brief tirade on the insanity of it all before surrendering what little hunch she had: that she was not yet ready to leave the sea truly, but that she was not ready to remain in the loneliness of our company either, a comment which spoken in another tone I would have taken as an insult. I did not understand, and admittedly do not quite now which is why I inquired how it could be that she would not be lonelier by herself in the lifeboat. When she touched her forehead against mine, the eyes looking back at me made painfully clear she did not know but nonetheless she whispered that hopefully the company of our absence would suit her more if she wished to arrive ashore one day. From the bottom of my heart I hope she is right, that I might see her again when at last the land reveals itself to me and that perhaps on that day a part of the hull will still be significantly lighter than the surrounding planks. Nobody trapped me aboard the fimbriae, though for a while I tried to convince myself that they had. I was told we were setting sail in no unclear terms a number of times, but despite this I stayed aboard. Mad as it should well sound, I cannot in good conscience claim that I would choose differently were I once more in my shoes. Very much the problem with the mad is that in their lunacy most of them think themselves sane and that in their rational observations many sane people think themselves mad. It is good then that the fimbriae does not invite the mad or in the same action considered backward sends them away. It merely exists and only the mad would allow her to take them from what they had known and into that through which they could know. Across the sea. As much as these words will never be seen or read, never serve clarity or comfort to anyone, I take great pride in the knowledge that this is the last of my letters, for I faintly smell the solid scent of earth. Be well