Each man alone, and Medea. No instructions to the helmsmen. They plot their own course out of nothing, try not to plot any course at all but only let the rudders run, some earlier belief that a blade of wood in water will find its way, eager for the open sea.

Medea can’t see Jason, doesn’t know whether he has joined the oarsmen or is on the bow looking ahead into the void for some sign, or standing on the yards.

Every sound close, magnified. Each oar dropping into water, creaking of wood and line, breathing of the men, the stream broken by each rudder. Medea strains to hear sounds beyond this, sounds to indicate larger shapes of water and land, but the rest of the world is silent. They can hear only themselves, Argo and the Argonauts and Medea in an oblivion.

The ship rolling just slightly, and no way of knowing whether they’ve come upright. No reference. The passages in Nute unmarked. Bends and turns unrecorded, unnoticed. Passing of all souls, each alone yet riding this same current, passing the same landmarks unseen.

Nute without heartbeat, without pulse. There should be some slow and heavy surge, rhythmic and reassuring, some giant heart hung far away above and worshipped like the sun, every ear listening in that direction, a way of measuring distance. All travelers swallowed and approaching, shaken as they come alongside, receding until just as the beat becomes indistinguishable from one’s own heart the new day is born and the sun worshipped instead. Each day Nute forgotten, and each night remembered.

But Nute is never heard. There is no pulse, nothing to follow, no way of measuring distance or where one might be in that long passage. Nute refusing human form. We can imagine a woman’s body, but this is only imagining.

Our own shape tries to form in darkness, something more of threat than promise but desired anyway. Something just beyond the limits of our skin, trying to solidify in the air but still shifting. Something that might fold into another and form in unison, some belief in night that we are not so separate, not held to the outlines of our own bodies.

Dream that cools as the sky blues and the first outlines become rigid, of mast and yards and water and men. Emerging from Nute, but no sense ever of the final part of that passage, because the moment day is noticed, it’s already arrived. The barest hint of light, and night is over. Nute vanished before we know we’ve left her.