Six days at the bottom of the ocean: No mermaid

Why am I having an extended fascination about the bottom of the ocean? I need a distraction, perhaps, and why not something outrageous and unknown? It's very much in the vein of what I used to conjure up during my childhood. Growing up, in my dreams, I was a relentless adventurer, skilled at tracking and gathering and defending, brave and sensible, dependent on no one, reliant on little but light and air, food and water; I was curious, eager, always wondering about and wandering through unknown lands, always looking for the farthest point on the horizon; I pitied those who were indifferent and had chosen to stop marveling at the world; I could be proud and distant, but not, I hoped, unkind; I was young and dreamy, but not a damsel or a mermaid, not one to be rescued or captured or killed.

Unfortunately, today, in real life, I'm a bit - no, a lot - more like the blind and tentative creatures who reside in the darkness of the ocean, sending out feelers and touching the space around them with slender fins, trying to picture a destination, locate food, avoid danger, discern friend from foe. Everything about their existence could be fragile, uncertain, but the thing is, they're there, they still are and will be even if their world is all darkness, marked by a glacial coldness and constant, intense pressure, and where anything close by could be a harbinger of change, or death. They survive, even if they're only drifting, and I suppose I can take comfort in that.

No mermaid, by Shaye
Drift on, by Butterfly Boucher