The liquid I was suspended in was thick and faintly luminous, warm as blood and clinging like oil, but strangely, I could breathe this liquid and not choke.
My eyes moved around, and I saw that the vessel was enormous, with curved walls of something like glass rising away on every side, far taller than a man, as if it were built to hold something far larger than me, or maybe something that was meant to grow.
I hung in the center of it, weightless, my white hair drifting around my face, far longer than I remembered, with my limbs loose in the fluid.
I could see, dimly, through the curved wall, shapes beyond, other vessels glowing, in this vast dim space, and there were a lot of them.
Then I noticed that I was not the only one in this vessel. Drifting a few feet from me was a creature that looked like an octopus had been fused with a man. I could see eyes and a nose, but the mouth was filled with long tentacles that almost reached its waist.
