dream: what is its nature
I swam with the deer-god in His water-form, a sort of cervine selkie. Down, down, to the depths of the dark ocean. He loaned a mer-tail, that we might go the faster.
"What is your deepest desire for him? What is the true motivation?" He asked, as we skimmed over black stone. We had left fulfillments behind, near the surface: gone below the story endings, descending past the darker narratives, past the surety of error: into thick and lightless waters.
Near the bottom, we hovered above a vast shape, covered over with a mat of black seaweed. "That is the shape of the desire." Even here, I could hear the clacking teeth in His voice, the grind of His bone-jaw. I dug my fingers in, and found the seam.
It took a very long time to pull away, even with the rope of muscle and scale. When it was finally revealed, opalescent and rippling, the jellyfish pumped its bell once, freeing itself from the sea floor.
It was wonderfully complex, many-layered and shifting, as if it had not yet fully decided what form to take, or was not done being born. I sensed some parts of it would always be diaphanous and undefined, impossible to know in their slow mutation.
"What is it?" He prompted. He wished me to name it: to put a concept to the desire.
"His highest self," I answered. "That which I may or may not ever witness."
It pulsed it the direction of the open ocean, where, down deep, I had yet to go. The Serpent was out there, but they did not yet know of one another: if they ever would.
I settled the mat onto the seafloor. The reflection-possibility creature would choose where it wished to go. His teeth clicked, once. We began the long rise.