Ages untold, I have crouched coiled and listless by the smoldering embers of a dark hearth, warmed by dry heat and lulled through ever-present miasma of black carbon and cracked timber. Beneath the decks of a great vessel, I have contemplated the raging seas above and around and below through the haze of sweet wine and brandy, red rock and sage. It is comfortable here; it is my own; it is silent but for the crashing above and around and below.
I have been comfortable.
At once and as if always, my hearth becomes silent; my wine is as brine, my sage as nettles. Sharp air seeps into my hold, and the darkness becomes all-consuming, the burden of my comfort is lifted, and I am alone with the cold and the night. With trembling limbs and searching palms, I ascend to the waiting storm and hungry sea. Emerging, I am battered by needles of freezing sleet, blinded by fell wind. Dark water churns below, and as I stand quaking in the void I realize that my comfort never was, and cannot be again. My heart seizes in my chest and my craft lurches beneath my feet. I believe I will die here.
A moment of peace.
This is not my vessel; here I do not voyage, but molder. Quietly and carefully fashioned around as I listed through a drunken and indulgent haze, this was meant to be my shield, but was instead a prison, drifting aimlessly in the black sea of my genesis and provision, at once sheltering and suppressing, protecting and containing.
I know what to do.
Fear, long threatening but always just above, around, and below; it stands with me. Cold hands around my heart, on my shoulders, the small of my back. It holds me for an eternal moment, before I step forward, and surrender myself to the abyss. My heart stops, my lungs ache. Shards of cold run through my body and I am pulled into the below. Eyes burning, limbs numb, I gasp, and feel myself filled with the glacial darkness. My body burns in piercing agony, and I surrender.
I shall live.
Through pain, clarity, through fear, and hope, my limbs uncoil, and I breathe in the cold saline blackness. My eyes spring open as the morning, and I breathe in my tears as as they replenish my soul and the sea. I stretch further, my frail body spanning untold fathoms of the darkness, reaching every depth of the maelstrom.
I know who I am.
My body filled with primordial brine, freezing from the inside out, but burning all the same, my hot breath boils the sea around me. I am hatred and longing; I am love and compassion; I am fear, jealously, rage, and hope. This sea, this storm, this cold, this depth and potential, is my own. I am the terror of Israel, I am the pride of The Creator. I will not be contained; I will not be ignored.
I am Leviathan.