I held my breath. Eyes hiding. Lips taught. I could not breathe: then it would be over. I knew that. Images floated through my head. I packed the gear up, put the box in the truck. Said nothing. They came, but nobody could see. No, still hidden. I couldn’t believe it. What could be said? The images. More than just images: moments before they had been my reality. I had been part of the image. My heart constricts as I write this. My eyes get soft.

The tears continued. Noha saw. Sam saw. I couldn’t talk. There was no explanation. The truck bumped away from the Islands. Away from the glimpse I’d had into another life.

Still there are not words to describe what is there. Still there are tears, internal now, when I remember the beauty. How can it be that an entire world exists under the surface parallel to and interdependent with ours and yet we know so little of it?

There are not words to describe the serenity of the blue, the freedom of neutral buoyancy, the tranquility of breathing through the regulator or the fascinating beauty of the creatures. It was the coral that grabbed my heart over those days. It had meant so little to me before and today it brought me to my knees.