Listen to the Water | FULL SERIES | Wattys 2022 Shortlist | ✔

(30) Taiki: Left Alone

I wake with a jolt that shatters the warm shell of water around me, setting me shivering only a heartbeat after I've woken up. I lock my muscles to stifle it and sit as still as I can, scanning the darkness and stillness with all my senses for any sign of danger. There's none. I light my hands. Ande isn't on my side of the ruin, but my twinge of automatic alarm cuts short at the memory of our fight yesterday. The cold still threatening my body vanishes. Ande isn't on my side of the ruin, and as far as I'm concerned, it can stay that way. It's going to be a while before I have any desire to face her again.

I push myself off the wall, and my mood sours further. I'm losing my arm strength. I've put off singing over myself again, not wanting to incapacitate myself with Sar so close by. I should have done it while they were still badly injured, but that was too soon after the last round. Now it feels like they've been with us forever.

I know this would be a good place to pause and tell my body what form I want it in again, but that requires talking to Ande to tell her I'll be out of commission. Right now, I'd rather do almost anything else. So I start foraging instead, staying deliberately on my side of the ruin. I suspect Ande is doing the same, because I don't see her. I worry briefly about running into Sar instead, and my hands stall just below the bottom mud. Sar bolted yesterday. After I went for their throat, a trauma spot I've known about since the very beginning. I wanted to reinforce my threat about being able to take them down. Instead, I made a fool of myself—they're a good enough fighter to counter me. I try not to think about their reaction.

I force myself to keep looking for food. It's useless; every part of the ruin brings back the same memories, and I stall over and over, my hands stopped by thoughts I can't shake. I allow myself one peek above the wall. There's no sign of Sar. I pull back, angry with the doubts that creep through my mind like sea-spiders. I know Sar will come back. Every interaction we've had reinforces that certainty. They've sacrificed far too much to leave now.

Except that I went for a trauma spot, and trauma doesn't respond to logic. I have personal experience with that reality. The logical side of me wants to believe Sar will come back, but I might have thrown too big a variable into the mix.

I can't keep going like this, not knowing. I push off the wall and brighten my hands to survey the ruin. It's eerily still. I'm surprised Ande isn't awake yet, or if she is, that she isn't moving about, searching for food. There isn't even a silt haze, the surest sign that someone's been foraging. Even I left one, and I know I've been careful.

Ande wouldn't leave me alone here. She's been too cautious about splitting up ever since we left Rapal, and she knows I spiral if left alone in the deep. I'm fine right now, but that's also because I'm angry.

That thought makes me pause. Actually, I've been fine for a while. I don't think I've had an episode ever since we arrived down here, though I came close when we found that severed arm. I've been too focused on food, survival, and the prophecy to let the other ocean creep in. Even with Sar there. Especially with Sar there. If we get attacked, I've been glad we'd have a shark to fight with us, and I hate myself for thinking it. I want to say they can get themself killed for all I care, but I do care, and it isn't helping.

The chill of the water creeps in again as the anger keeping me warm wavers. My distrust of the Sami is justified. They killed my whole first tribe and knocked my mind out of reach for years. I've almost died by their hands. But there's a part of me now, in defiance of everything, that wants to find Sar and apologize.

I hope I didn't drive them off for good. We need them. I couldn't admit it to her face, but Ande was right. And I still don't see Ande. She's probably sitting somewhere, doing her hair or just watching the water—she's started doing that a lot since we left Rapal. When I ask her what she's watching for, she says it's nothing. That she's just thinking.