Sergeant Quinn Walker leaned against one of the worn rails along its deck. He listened to the endless hiss of the waves and watched the glitter and trick of sunlight upon the water. A cigarette burned down to its soggy nub between his fingers, the tips of which were as yellow as ivory piano keys. Not only was his hair now flecked with grey, but also his eyes, as if the ash of the passing years were silting down through his innards, turning perhaps even his liver and heart to soot. Although only twenty-six years old, he had grown up in unexpected ways. No longer did he resemble the boy he had once been. He had become furtive, alert to the turning of the world, a man perpetually on the verge of departure. A pod of dolphins threaded out and back beneath the water, spinning and hanging suspended for a second before vanishing again under the waves. Birds bathed in the rainbows that materialised in the spray. Quinn found it impossible to watch the ocean’s surface without imagining what might be swimming in the dark universe below: whales and sharks; fish that barked; lizards that prowled the coral beds; the mighty leviathan.
