A Most Abstract Dream

Both the fate of my ship and the fate of the Ukrainians somehow hung in the balance.

My charge was to complete a Japanese spiritual ritual that was supposed to replicate an old myth in which the Spirit of Water, as the highest of the natural elements, defeated all of the lesser ones.

I knew that my performance of this ritual would be feeble because of my relative cultural ignorance and my lack of experience, but I also knew that the performance would be accepted because of the sincerity, the seriousness of purpose, with which it was offered.