There’s the motorized roar and the background roar of the sea. There’s the greyed-out horizon, and the signs for the upcoming exits, Iceland coming up in a few hours and beyond that Denmark and Norway.
It’s a dream, of course, because in real life there is no highway across the empty waters, over and past the sea-roads trodden by Vikings, by slavers and by pirates who called themselves explorers. There is no road that passes over the ghost road of the Middle Passage, no exit for the West Indies or for Ireland.
It’s real, because the book says there is such a place, and there’s a slowing as the clouds clear and an improbably blue sky breaks overhead, a baroque Mediterranean heaven, and the Utopian consul steps on board to look at her papers and to ask her the purpose of her visit. What is the answer to that question?
E. P. Beaumont 
*applause* Great working in the questioning, and ending the six with a ? I visualise you as a weaver (of words), making patterns, and arranging textures. Beautiful writing.
The North Atlantic Highway was born in imagination on 11 May 2006 (just about five years ago) on a terrifying drive from Minneapolis to Chicago through unseasonable sleet at 75 miles an hour with surrounding trucks throwing up mist and showing their taillights like a particularly malevolent Turner storms cape… a trip during which I comforted myself with the thought of something worse.
Beautifully moody.
Along with your usual beautiful and intricate writing style, you always have something, some detail, that is unique to each story and just as arresting as your actual writing. Wonderful.
Intriguing six, I’m wondering just where she’s going.
I always have to read these snippets at least three times. They are chock full of images, questions without answers and bits to ponder. Pirates who called themselves explorers….
(have been through storms as you mentioned. I usually just cringe)
Stunning, as always. Great job!
Such an intriguing blend of dream and reality, past and present, and so much movement compelling the reader onward.
Beautiful visualization. I love the idea of a transoceanic highway.
This story continues to build well. Very nice six.