No salt spray over these railings, nor swell beneath the keel; no smoother ride than this upon the crest of a wave that never breaks. Petra paces the deck restlessly with legs that never tire, eyes burning with wakefulness. The stars have been eaten by the curve of the glass, but she has faith they’re out there still; if she could get far enough, up, forward, or out, she’d find them there, waiting, uncaring, unmoved. She can see nothing but the blue void of the sky, but she knows that’s nothing but a trick of the light, a construct of dust, distance, and refraction.

Can the world itself be stifling? There is nowhere to go that she can’t go, but she can barely breathe from strain. She sleeps naked on deck, and wakes up still warm, throws herself into the sea and walks along the curved ocean’s floor, climbs the anchorline as easily as a flight of stairs, stands on deck dry as a winter room. What rebellion is possible when rebellion is the motor of the spheres?

She screams in the plastic faces of her shipmates and the eileithyia smile back, unfazed, as remote as the stars she can’t see, as unreachable as the other side of the glass.