Stavanger Bay to light a candle is to cast a shadow

With his hair pulled back by the wind, his sharp chin in profile, he looks much older than he really is, blinking into the water. His cheek in profile, silhouetted, is pinched when he smiles. Miranda nods in hearty agreement. If he could read his mind, he would find endless amusement in his new moniker, the mountain man.

He didn't know what jellyfish were, and only had the vaguest idea of a turtle. Half-formed beasts rise out of the primordial soup in his head, zygotic, with the consistency of scrambled egg, cobbled together by nothing but imagination and memory. Like dreams, they disintegrate as soon as you get too close.

You talk like an old man, an old fisherman, he remarks, his grin toothsome and ribbing. What's your name? I'm Miranda. Hearing his own name, he's reminded of Holden, who had once been so close that HoldenandMiranda was a veritable word you could find in any dictionary, but now was so far that he seemed as trivial and foreign as the Kuiper belt hundreds of millions of miles into space.

Despite it all, he can't help but wonder how he's doing, if he's even alive.