We are here now.

0.04: Dawn.

The fire looks plasmatic in its graceful hisses.

The heat around the fire keeps us warm, just as we keep each other warm. It feels strangely blissful, to see each other stripped of all pretense. It gives me such perplexing relief to see everyone else here as bare with raw emotions as me.

I don't pray. I don't care about the ideals and habits that comprise me anymore. Still, I pass a silent prayer to the whatever that resides up there,

Let us dream a little longer.

'A little longer', I say, because a part of me knows better than 'forever'.

Eventually, my eyes close shut. When I wake up, I realize, there is a blanket draped over me. The heat from the fire has died down, leaving behind burnt remnants of fiery play. But I am warm. The kind of warmth that envelopes one only in his own room. A few more seconds tick away as I register that all of us are lying entangled in a cozy knot. All of us, except one.

My eyes wander to the barren place around the periphery. I spot him. Carefully and skillfully untangling myself from the heap of bodies I walk towards the deck a few hundred meters away. 

For a brief moment, I think I see overlapping figures. But it is only his amiable face I am greeted with as I silently take a seat next to him. He casually puts an arm around me, I return him the most genuine of my smiles. His expression is unreadable, he stares piercingly at the vast blueness. I follow his limitless eyes, trying to measure the ocean by looking at it. He looks lost, yet exactly at home. Not sad, but something far, very far from happy.

He asks me, almost in a whisper, what I think of the sea. I pause and take a look at the sea through the gaps between my fingers. I tell him, just as softly, that I think it's breathtaking. Its unperceivable depth and untellable extent scare me as much as they incite me. He lets out a dry laugh. But his eyes sparkle with sincerity.

You dive. And then you either learn to swim or drown. 

The birds chirp away in a melody of their own, signaling the awakening of the town. The world will never understand their art. Just as I never understood how simple words hid the truth.

'It's dawn', I say. 

The last traces of stars have faded into diffused color from the Sun, yet to reveal itself. The clarity of the night is gone. A picturesque haze of colors has overtaken the heavens like a decorative blanket. Isn't this the same way we veil the truth in sweet fantasies and lies? 

'It's dawn', he says back, adding slightly more weight to the words.