There's no way out of this, it's stark: live or die. Every given moment a bubble that bursts. Step on, from one to the next, ever onwards, a rainbow of stepping stones, each bursting softly as your foot touches and passes on.
I put my head back and watched the sky along with him. It was black and very starry. Starry out there is not like in London. There, starry is an observable impossibility, and looking up is a gaze into infinity.
How do you get there? Death, I mean, wherever it was the wild thing dropped you: you, breath-stopped, amazed. Will I fall there or drift? When would be the moment of knowing? What sound? What sight? The sky, dark or light? The side of the boat?
It's a strange thing when you first go off into the unknown. You want it and you're scared.