When the Prince arrived, he was abandoned on a wooden raft. From down here, looking up, he seemed as small as a doll. From his perspective, gazing out at the ocean, the sun beamed down vertically, piercing the water, shimmering and spreading out like a golden net. Perhaps his eyes were teary, but strangely, he saw him like an old doll with broken limbs, yet the aura around him glowed like the halo of a deity.

The Dolphin stretched his fins, straining through the shimmering net to get closer to him. Even when he got nearer, he didn't seem much larger. If that form was human, he would be the size of the little boy who always played by the shore on a Japanese island, throwing stones at whatever his father caught in the net. Perhaps he truly was a god, shrunk when discarded. For any creature cast away on this earth, they all shrink. Or perhaps the world expands like a balloon, filling with sorrow, pushing the horizon to the borders of infinity, making the sun more distant, while fingers and toes become smaller. No, the right word is withered, wasted away. A fear welled up in him that he would vanish. Perhaps, but can someone dissolve into the ocean?

He stopped, a layer of water away from him, close enough to observe. He wore a collarless t-shirt, ragged jeans. He lay on his side, half his face submerged. He had beautiful lips, he thought, surely a beautiful smile too. He had swum across many seas, traversed thousands of nautical miles. Some places had people, many didn't. But if there were people, he always wished to see them smile. When they smiled, those land-dwelling creatures looked so endearing. But gradually, as cities sprang up, encroaching on the beaches, those living in cube-shaped high-rises no longer preserved their beautiful smiles. But perhaps he didn't belong to a city, so he had a round face and lips that would surely radiate when smiling.

Could his lips also dissolve?

He stayed there, a layer of water apart, afraid to come closer, yet wanting to remain right there, listening to the echoing surf, floating in the intersection between sunlight and water shadows. This distance should not be reduced further. He was dead, wasn't he? Should he disturb someone who has passed? He looked so peaceful, he couldn't allow himself to intrude. Gradually, he turned away, sinking into the depths of the ocean.

-

That June, the Dolphin abandoned his pack.

He swam alone for two thousand nine hundred and seventy nautical miles since leaving the pack resting at the coral reef. He thought he had crossed the horizon during a pink-purple dawn. No companions. His fin had a hole, causing him to swim crookedly. But he persevered. Drifting in the water was a great joy, why stop because of an injured fin, even if there were no companions around?

The water here was as beautiful as love. The light here shone as bright as hope. But no companions. The pack must have swum in another direction, following their annual migration to suitable waters. They all left him, forever. They wouldn't return to the reef, nor remember him as he would remember them. Layers of water stacked upon each other; how could one see through them? How to see each other now when light refracts through each inch of water, transforming into myriad forms. He swam in a layer of clear, still water, like an unexpressed emotion. Water slipped through the tear in his fin, occasionally cutting the newly healed wound. But it didn't matter, as long as he could swim in this layer, enjoying the phosphorescent lights dancing.

Why can't we cry underwater, he wondered. Why can't we cry? Because the saltwater already surrounds us, doesn't it?

Two thousand nine hundred and seventy nautical miles since parting near the tropic. Not lost, parted. That's what happened, farewell my friends, farewell my family, my little nephews and nieces who always followed my fin. Farewell the drifting plankton around us. I'm leaving. See, my fin is no longer perfect, my swimming path is crooked. I will swim skewed, swim sideways, bumping into others and hurting them. If not hurting, it would surely annoy them when I constantly touch their tail fins. Our whole pack would collide and that's terrible! I know our patience is great, for we are a species that loves the ocean and the land creatures who stray here. But I'm broken, shouldn't delay everyone's journey. So let's part here, hopefully not forever, but who knows about tomorrow?

-

Each day, the Dolphin returned to the place where he had found the Prince. He took a deep breath, dove down, swam to the exact spot beneath him, and let himself slowly float up. He loved the buoyant feeling in the water and pondered the possibility of him being discarded. Then he panicked at his own thoughts—how could anyone discard him? Was he a sinner? Or perhaps he too had a flaw, no longer perfect?

He began to talk to him, trying to send waves of sound, messages—one, two, three, more each day. He never responded. The brief, one-sided conversations, the wordless questions. He didn't hear.

The Dolphin had heard stories, ancient legends. That somewhere very close to this world, there was a white dwarf star. The star drifted in an atmosphere the color of buttermilk. Beyond that, the universe was pitch black. A dead star, but still, a few people survived on it. They were no different from humans on this earth, only they were always sad and silent. The white dwarf star wasn't very big, its diameter only as wide as the narrowest part of the Japanese Strait. Everything on it was white because no color remained after death, or perhaps all colors had dissolved away. The people who stayed there had to guard the star. They had to row it, avoiding the ever-looming meteors, the occasional storms of cosmic rays. They used a massive oar, growing thinner from the effort of pushing it through space. They would eventually die beside that giant oar. Not quite a story, just a scene. On a small celestial body drifting in eternal darkness, there were always sad, silent people, dying as they wasted away.

Could he have been sent down from that star? Was he the last prince of the star, steering his round home through darkness, loneliness, and visible wounds? Did he fall when the star could no longer hold him? He fell through the atmosphere of the earth, green and bright with sunlight, becoming wrinkled by the wind, for it couldn't help but hurt him as he descended too quickly. Nothing to hold or protect him as his home became a distant memory. And he landed here, a little prince with beautiful lips no longer smiling.

-

About ten days passed like this, with the dream of the white dwarf star so vivid he could almost see it floating above him, slanting through his shoulder, a distant but close presence. Miraculously, he remained there as if asleep. He slept under the bright sun, under the gentle moon, in the wind and water. Still lying on the wooden plank, still wrinkled and broken like an old doll, but he was beautiful with slightly smiling lips, making his face more serene than any face that had ever gazed down into the water from a boat.

Surely he didn't come from this world. He had seen decayed bodies sinking, bloating, floating, and being picked clean to the bone after storms wrecked ships. The relentless journeys before his fin was injured gave him plenty of experience, too much for one who had to stop long before old age. Among thousands of experiences with land-dwellers, he had never seen anyone last this long in the ocean. The dead in water would dissolve. And the ever-hungry sea would devour everything.

The Prince didn't dissolve, his presence gently cut across the axes of time and space. He occupied an entire sky, held back the currents. He existed at the intersection of the horizontal and vertical planes. Just like that, perfectly. The Dolphin closed his eyes and thought about his breath. He was still too timid to come closer. So, what he could do for him was to imagine he was still breathing, rising and falling. To breathe in an environment, truly breathe, brings a great sense of peace. The Prince looked so peaceful, was he breathing? Breathing is very important, he knew that well.

-

On his dorsal fin, there was a puncture, a harpoon wound. It wasn't accidental. The whaling ships came every few years like an incurable plague. When the harpoon pierced his dorsal fin, he thought he had stopped breathing. There was no pain more brutal; his lungs seized when pulled from the water, eyes seeing the clouds blur, and within a few seconds, the searing pain began thrashing within his torn body. At that moment, he felt death invade, halting every heartbeat, rupturing every vein. "Despair" wasn't enough to describe it. If there was a deep abyss, he was being stripped of life and thrown into its depths.

The Dolphin didn't know how he escaped. Perhaps survival instinct took over his mind. He thrashed and swam away, leaving behind a trail of purple-tinged sea foam from the blood mingling with seawater. Long after, breath returned, slicing through his soul with icy coldness, and finally, he awoke, realizing he was alive but permanently scarred. In that moment, he had been hollowed out, they had torn away a part of his life, filling it with a resigned acceptance. Gradually, as the waves washed away the blood, that feeling spread into a calm stillness.

In the days that followed, he called it solace.

-

The sea. The most wonderful place on this planet to be lonely. Every creature can find a space large enough to feel as though there is nothing around them but layers of water. When rising above the water, there is the sky. The sky, borderless, stretches infinitely, not knowing where it belongs. When no longer submerged in the mystical atmosphere of the sea's depths, surfacing only brings the sound of rustling wind, murmuring waves, and the splashing of sea foam. Everything is simple and clear in a stationary frame of reference. Summer sunlight pours down, layering upon the water, blending into myriad blue nets, fading before reaching the darkness. All movements up and down, soothing and retreating, contracting and expanding, rhythmic and continuous, with no disruption—no harpoon can pierce through that solitary fortress. When in the heart of the sea, one cannot even cry, for tears are dissolved by the ocean before they fall. Similarly, sorrow, too. The ocean is endless sadness, so within it, we grow sadder without any means of expression.

Thus, to the Dolphin, in some way, the Prince was a kindred spirit.

He believed the Prince came from the white dwarf star. Every being has their own solitary ocean. His ocean back home might be even larger. His own ocean had land as a stopping point, islands and coral reefs as resting places for long journeys. His ocean, or once his ocean, could it be any different? The universe, pitch black, distant galaxies, lonely drifting nebulae. Not a sound for centuries. Surely, while rowing the white dwarf star with that giant oar, he used his heartbeat to keep time. One, two, three, until his strength left him, and the heartbeat fell into some deep hollow. Oh. Every heartbeat a reminder that he was alone.

He brought that loneliness here, sinking into a deep sleep, where sorrow condensed into form. Thin fingers, small feet, dark hair floating, and a serene face. Perhaps he had died, perhaps he was no longer breathing, fading each day, slowly vanishing, though he hadn't noticed. Because his concentrated sadness still breathed with the old rhythm of his heart, like a living being, peacefully existing.

The Dolphin wanted to cry for the first time, feeling a loneliness greater than the sea.

But as we've said all along, tears cannot be seen in the salty water.

-

"Come home with me?" He asked, with the saddest sound waves a dolphin could produce.

"I'll carry you across two thousand nine hundred and thirty nautical miles. I'll swim with you through the warmest currents, I'll hold you tight so the white dwarf star can't take you back to that desolate place. I'll embrace you with all my strength and heart. I'll love you with the love that no other creature has given me. We will go home together, to the most beautiful coral reef. It might take a while, because I'm not whole anymore, I can't swim as fast as I used to. I'm losing weight, I'm losing taste. But I promise we'll go home together. We'll lie next to each other, hold each other close, and welcome each other into our hearts. Come home with me, okay?"

That day, the ocean suddenly roared. From deep within, the darkest waters echoed with resounding screams. If water could collapse, this would be the most violent collapse in centuries. The water was boiling. The dolphin decided to pass through the last layer of water separating him from the being, something the magical ocean would surely try to prevent. That being was forever bound to the white dwarf star—a dead star. What happens when we approach a dead star? Perhaps we'll be swallowed by death, buried by a tsunami.

But the Dolphin still decided to get closer to his Prince. Every inch of water he tried to cross, a red tear spilled from the corner of the Prince's eye. The first drops dissolved as if he had never cried. But the closer he got, the more they flowed. The sea could no longer dissolve them all; his tears turned the water beneath into the most devastating hue. The Dolphin also cried, but his tears couldn't hold any shape. An inch, another inch, the pain in his fin seared, the pain in his heart tightened. He was dissolving in tears, the red water weaving a cocoon, gradually enveloping him. The red deepened until he could no longer see the Prince's outline. The screams still echoed in the water. He felt himself disintegrating in the red water. He felt as if many harpoons were piercing him each time he tried to reach into the cocoon of tears. He wanted to hold him, hold him tight.

"Please don't go," he cried, "please don't go!" He stretched out his small fins to touch his fingers. He continued even as his skin peeled off, disintegrating immediately as he reached further. With eyes still wide open to see, with senses still clinging to feel, he felt as if he had grasped his hand. With what little remained, he stretched, throwing himself into the cocoon, embracing fully.

An emptiness.

-

Now, there was only the Dolphin—completely shattered and exhausted, clinging to the floating plank. He couldn't stop crying, though his tears were clear and dissolved the moment they escaped. He turned his eyes up to the sky and saw the white dwarf star. Oh, he had never seen a star so close. A round, lonely one, drifting bewilderedly in the vast universe. That was the Prince home, far away. It emitted a strange light, causing the few remaining fragments of the Dolphin to continue to dissolve. He saw rain falling and felt himself dissolving with it. The rain, tinted with the color of the sky, high above. In the end, he would never see or embrace his Prince again. Surely he too wanted to go home, to the white dwarf star, where blue rains might have once fallen and the moon once shone. He continued to cry as each small piece of him melted away. Until the final moment, when the last tear dissolved, leaving no trace.

And gradually, the currents washed away all the blood and dissolved the tears. The waters turned blue again, dark and deep, with the fish in this layer unable to see their companions in another.