#either triangle and bob or thin H line

[romilly-jay]

Let's start with a version of where this first began

Training journal – mid-north seaboard, New Pangaea (166CE, Matumaini 23)

All morning, a blurring, whooping rush of step // leap // gap // tumble // land // yell.

Sometimes one jumped first, sometime the other. Pelting full-tilt down huge mounds of sand. Clattering-smack of sandals against piled pebbles, softening to gloop-slosh-swwwsh at water’s edge. Collapsing into laughter as they reconnected.

First day camped at the edge of the world and so easy-intuitive to train here at the beach. Didn't feel like effort. Wished they’d found it sooner. So much abandoned space.  No-one left here to watch, unnerved or disapproving at the looped, repeating, unpredictable flicker-out, staccato-in effect of time-jumps observed from a single-now, against the forward-pulse of moment-into-moment.

Sweat-salt and sea-salt mingled on their sprint-ruddied skin. Chests heaving from the race-chase and from hollering into the swirl of wind that snatched noise out of throat and lungs and replaced it with a wilder, engulfing hiss-howl. Ears ringing from the noise – and the abrupt extinguishing of sound with each scramble into the in-between. Occasionally a relative stillness lingered as they dropped back into the time-flow – if they hit a pocket of calm weather. But always in the background, the softness of huge bodies of water rolling, horizon to horizon, nothing to collide with.

With the jumping and the joy and the overwhelm of new place, new sensations, neither could say for sure which of them first noticed the small triangle of lighter-blue cutting a diagonal line through the deeper grey-green/grey-blue of the ocean.

Once spotted, they lost track again, on their way through and into the in-between.

It took a few jumps to establish which present-now contained the small vessel and when they found it, the triangle was reversed and useless, flapping up into the sky, a splay of slipped sheet streaming out beyond it, a deadly, out-of-control pendant.

At the thin mast, a figure struggling to haul it in. Perhaps slipped, or perhaps decided that, uncontrolled, the rig was more danger than utility. Either way, as they watched, debating how to help, the rope and the sail detached and whirled away.

Unsure how wide the window would be for any rescue, they paused, alert in the present-now, unwilling to jump-search in case they overshot, missing the moment. Waited for the waves to deal mercy, or refuse to. Willed the figure to stay afloat. Clung to each other when the line of the boat vanished behind a house-high swell, juddering sigh into each other’s shoulders whenever it bobbed back into view. Tortuous progress against an unfamiliar pattern of currents.

Until eventually... a glimpse of the vessel nudging forward into shallower, if chest-deep, water and, ignoring the warnings in their heads, both waded out. No hesitation but initially no clear plan until the figure in the boat, still conscious, still fighting, threw a rope to haul on. Leapt over the other side, hauling on another.

Heaved. Kept their feet under them, but barely. And then scratch-scrape as the beach joined in, gravelling the underside of the vessel, a welcome grasp that prevented it whooshing away into deep water.

Now, the boat was ashore and the three of them lay on the sand, collapsed full-length, gulping for air.

The stranger struggled to seated, turned to his rescuers with a gesture of thanks and – ‘Tay?’ said Mallory. ‘H-Hravn? Is that you?’