Long ago, before the Ocean’s daughter became the Ocean, before the first age of machines, when the fires of men still burned bright with the potency of the god’s furnace from whence they came, a woman named Simone lived in a high tower. The tower stood upon a long and toothed archipelago of rocks, and all around it was the ocean. Only at low tide was it possible for the woman to leave her tower, and at high tide she saw the ocean in all four directions.

The lady Simone often would wander the long, winding stairwells of her tower, having nothing to do but watch the ocean as its waves rolled in towards the shore, while some few crashed about the jagged foundations. At other times she would dance, but always alone, for no one else lived in the towers. She would sing, but only to herself, for only the ocean could hear her. She would write, and she would leave these missives to flutter from her window, to be washed away on the tide.

While the lady Simone watched the ocean, and sang for it, and wrote letters to it, the Ocean was watching her. He had little else to do, as he rolled his waves towards the shore, and crashed at the base of her tower. He listened to her sing, and wondered what siren lived in the tower. He read her letters, and wondered what poet lived in the tower. He watched her at the windows and wondered what beauty lived in the tower.

At last the Ocean could no longer bear to wonder. One evening, he rose up before the window where he saw the beauty and spoke. “You are more beautiful than all the gold of all the sunsets I have ever witnessed, and the woman who sings has a voice lovelier than any song ever sung to my honor, and she who writes speaks of greater depths than my deepest chasms. Please, I beg of you, let me make my introductions to all of these women. Let me give them my thanks for all their beauty, and with their permission, court one of them.”

The lady Simone bowed her head to the god and gave him leave to enter her home. “I am the lady Simone, and I shall introduce you to each fair lady of the castle. I am pleased to meet you, but the singer is very shy. You must promise to close your eyes and not even turn to see her while she sings to you.”

The patience of the Ocean is eternal, and he bowed his head to the lady Simone as she led him to the second floor of the tower. She left him there, and presently returned. While the Ocean stood, eyes closed and facing away from her, she sang to him most beautifully for hours on end. With music still in her voice, she came up behind the ocean and place a hand over his eyes. “Now, come, and you shall meet the poet. But she is the shiest of us all, and so you may only see her hands.”

This, too, the Ocean agreed upon, and the lady Simone led him up to the third floor, still covering his eyes. She left him facing away from the door and presently returned, carrying paper, quill, and ink. She secreted herself behind a heavy tapestry, so that only her hands were visible, and placed her implements of writing upon her desk. “Thank you for your patience. If you wish to turn around, you may.” The Ocean watched as her hands and fingers moved in quick and determined strokes, and over the following hour she wrote for him a fabulous story. “Now, wait here, for you shall speak once more with the lady Simone.” With these words, she slipped out of the room.

Presently the lady Simone returned, and led the Ocean up to the fourth floor. “My thanks,” said the Ocean, “but I still know no more of the other fair ladies than when I first beheld all your beauty, your enchanting voice, and your poetry.”

“Well,” said the lady Simone, “come and dance with me, and if you dance well I will tell you their names, or you may guess.” Thus the Ocean then took the lady Simone’s hand, and for hours and hours they danced, until at last the Ocean spoke again, “I know you by your beauty, and yet as you breathe I cannot tell you apart from the singer, and as your hand is enclosed in mine I cannot tell you apart from the writer. I beg of you, tell me their names.”

“I suspect there is no need,” said the lady Simone, “as you have the answer already. There is no other living man or woman in this tower save me.”

The Ocean was greatly pleased by this, and he clasped her hand between his. “My lady, I have wondered nothing for the past years but who this poet and singer and beauty might be, and now I find they are all of them one. As it is fed, my curiosity grows. I wish to know what it is to have such beauty and poetry and song inside me. I will grant you the whole ocean for a year if only, during that same time, you grant me yourself.”

“You are generous, but I do not think I could live as the ocean. Certainly not for a year. You are vast and I know of the dark things which lurk in your depths. If there is any other way I may aid you than that, please ask.”

The Ocean pondered this and spoke again, “There is, perhaps, another way. For one year, if I may have all of your dreams, you may have all of mine. Then I may know something of what it is to be you, and you will have all the dreams of the world.”

The lady Simone allowed as that this was acceptable, and on that night she and the Ocean exchanged their dreams.

That same night, as she lay down to sleep, the dreams of the Ocean rushed into her head. She tried her best to contain them, but she could not, and soon they flooded into her body, and escaped into the waking world. When the lady Simone woke the next day, her tower was awash in the dreams of the ocean. The memories of the world’s beginning, of the time before there was light or land or life, all these mixed together with the strange and exotic creatures from all his shores.

Every morning, she struggled to forget the memories of Ocean’s dreams, but they persisted, crawling through the tower, filling it, and overflowing it. She could no longer sing, or dance, or write. She ceased to watch the ocean, and had nothing else to do but to grasp her sanity tightly, as more and more dreams flooded from her mind, and the world became less and less a waking thing. Even the day and the night became twisted by her borrowed dreams, and time fell into a fugue from which it seemed she would never escape.

But Time more than anyone else will let nothing sully his honor. The year proceeded and, at its end, the Ocean rose before the lady Simone’s tower once again. She allowed him in, as she did not know if he was real or not, but soon she was assured that he was. She fell into his arms and said, “Please, take back all your dreams. You see how they have filled my home, escaped my grasp, and run amok. Please, take them back, for I cannot contain an ocean of dreams.”

The Ocean held her tight as she spoke, but as she begged, he began to shake, and when she looked to his eyes, he was crying. “Oh, lady Simone, how foolish I have been. I thought it nothing to exchange so small a thing as our dreams but here I find you in pain and me… Your dreams, lady Simone, are too large for me. They have filled me up and even now flood the lands around my borders. But do you see? If I cannot contain your dreams, and you cannot contain mine, what else is there to do?”

Thus the Ocean and the lady Simone comforted one another as best as they could. And that night, by unspoken accord, the lady Simone took the Ocean into her bed.

Upon waking, the lady Simone looked about in wonderment. The dreams of the Ocean no longer filled her house, and that night she had dreamed her own dreams, and not a single one overflowed into the waking world. She turned to speak to the Ocean, but he was staring about her bedchambers in the same bewilderment, until his eyes alighted on her, and understanding dawned.

“Ah, my fairest lady Simone, this is what has become of our dreams. My share has returned to me, and yours to you, and what we cannot share between us has been given over to another.” He placed a hand over the lady Simone’s belly. “Someday, your child will become the Ocean. She will share your dreams and my own, your beauty and my depths, your song and my voice. But until she is ready to return to me, she will be yours, and will inherit all her wisdom from her mother.”

And that is how the lady Simone dreamed the dreams of the ocean and, in so doing, become the ocean’s mother.