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She opened her eyes into a sea of blue. She realized that she was neutrally buoyant. A few moments and she had adjusted herself. Her breathing was slow and calm. What was strange was that she didn’t float or sink with each respiration. She remained at neutral. A quick look at her hands revealed that she was still human. Her hands went to her face – no mask, no regulator. She was naked and streamlined. Her hair, normally uncontrollable, was a mass of clean ringlets. It was a writhing black fire that screamed what her otherwise reserved demeanor hid.

She felt completely lost, but she knew she had to swim. As she began a slow variation on the breast-stroke she found that her arms and legs were more powerful than ever before. Another quick check yielded no discernable change in her anatomy, yet her strokes moved her at the same pace as the surrounding life. Exhilaration spread through her like a slow heat. She couldn’t intake enough. She glided through coral beds and tailed schools of rays. Their bodies waved like the arms of a bird. In their wake she was a member of their flying “V”. She felt the instinct that she had envied so deeply of the birds overhead. She knew exactly where she was going. She couldn’t understand why or how, but she knew that she had to swim forward.

Her journey took her into the night. She swam deeper and deeper until the sun’s rays no longer lent any color to her environment. She started to register the phosphorescent glow of the bottom dwellers. Plankton swarmed around her head creating a glow that swam with her. From a distance she was a comet with her own tail of light. From even further away, her comet seemed to be speeding towards a light that pulsed from the greatest depths.