She glides through the Pacific, less briny than the Atlantic, smelling faintly flowery, like the Hawaiian air.  With a salty tingle in her nose and on her lips, she windmills in a slow, dreamy freestyle. Inchy fish wriggle along the sandy bottom, which lacks the punctuation of half-embedded shells.

aqua agua mayim eau

wasser voda mizu shui

The mantra her meditation teacher had given her repeats in her head.  “It’s your natural element,” he said.

“You mean mine?”  She tapped her palm on her chest.  “Or everyone’s?”

The teacher smiled.

Waves lift and lower her now, lulling the splashing nearer the beach where kids hop and squeal, lifeguards patrol, and couples bask hand-in-hand in the serenity of familiar love.  Beneath her, a green-black bulk floats into view and beyond before it registers as a giant sea turtle, its flippers as elegant and subtle as a Bolshoi ballerina, oblivious to its viewer.

That creature doesn’t need a mantra, she muses with a surge of envy, then settles back into her well-trained, quiet strokes.

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The author of fiction in Yankee, Writers Forum, Ellipsis, Flash Fiction, Bright Flash Literary Review and New Stories from New England, Marcia Yudkin advocates for introverts through her newsletter, Introvert UpThink (https://www.introvertupthink.com/).  Her essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Ms., Next Avenue , and NPR.  She lives in Goshen, Massachusetts (population 960).