Eliza: (leans forward, voice low) You know what scares me? The ocean’s too big to love all at once. Like… you give yourself to it, and it doesn’t even notice.

DH: (eyes heavy, slow drag) Maybe that’s the point. It doesn’t need to notice. You drown, it keeps going. You float, it keeps going. It’s… merciless. But also merciful. Same thing.

Eliza: (shakes her head, almost laughing) That’s fucked up. How can mercy and cruelty be the same?

DH: (smiles faintly) Same way the tide drowns a sailor and saves a castaway. Same wave. Different story.

Eliza: (quiet, staring off) …That’s it. That’s exactly it.

DH: (after a pause) What?

Eliza: (laughs softly) I don’t remember. But I felt it. Like a hook in my chest.

DH: (nodding, eyes glassy) That’s the ocean. It’s not teaching us words—it’s teaching us feelings too big for words.

Eliza: (suddenly fierce) No—listen—think about whales. Huge, ancient things, moving under us. And we barely even know they’re there. What if space is the same? What if there are things so big, we’re just… nerves inside their body?

DH: (leans in, whispering like a secret) Then we’re not small at all. We are the movement. Every synapse firing in us is a flick of their tail.

Eliza: (eyes glinting) And they’re dreaming us. This whole thing—(gestures to the joint, the horizon, the moment)—we’re just part of some slow, impossible dream.

DH: (closes his eyes, breath heavy) Fuck. That makes me want to cry.

Eliza: (reaches out, touches his hand) Don’t. Just breathe it. Just let it hurt.

DH: (after a long silence) You ever think love’s the same way? Like the ocean? Too big, too brutal, but you dive anyway because the drowning feels holy.

Eliza: (soft, trembling smile) That’s why I stay. Because when you say shit like that… I don’t care if I drown.