Upstream

"All the ninth day passed in a trance of light. The boat moved slowly. The river, now clear as wind, rushed by so silently that the boat seemed to float above it, between two airs. All around them were levels of rock and pale grass, pale distances. The mountains were lost, hidden by the vast swell of rising land. Land, and sky, and the river crossing from one to the other.

This is a longer journey, Sutty thought, standing again at the rail that evening, than my journey from Earth to Aka. And she thought of Tong Ov, who might have made this journey himself and had given it for her to make, and wondered how to thank him. By seeing, by describing, by recording, yes. But she could not record her happiness. The word itself destroyed it.

She thought: Pao should be here. By me. She would have been here. We would have been happy.

The air darkened, the water held the light."

- Ursula Le Guin, The Telling