She doesn’t remember the time she lived in the water, but it happened, just as it’s happening now inside her. But her body remembers the smooth rocking; It remembers the comfort of muffled sound, vibrations in the dark. She moves along the edge of the beach, aching to feel the familiar water on her skin.

She wades in gentle rhythm with the waves, inhaling its cool touch. She catches a glimpse of herself reflected in the water and is reminded of the botticelli painting of the birth of Venus, a fully formed and glorious woman, riding a shell on the waves. She thinks then of the theory of evolution, how all life began in the sea, slowly alchemizing over ages to crawl out onto dry land. In a few weeks, it will again; life emerging from water.