Tideborn

The night I wash ashore, the stars look like barnacles—small and stubborn, clinging to a dark hull I can’t name. Waves unmake themselves around my ribs. The tide tries to pull me back, then changes its mind, foaming away like a friend unsure if they’re still invited.

I crawl from the water on my knees, palms, and pride. I have legs again; they remember me like old scars remember knives—with a twitch.

The lighthouse above me turns its slow white eye. Its beam slices the fog, leaving a metallic taste in the air. I press my cheek to a tide pool and hear it gossip with the ocean: He’s here. He shouldn’t be.

There were rules. Don’t sing above the foam line. Don’t touch a human’s mouth. Don’t rescue what the sea has claimed. I broke the last one. The man drowning beneath me wasn’t the sea’s lesson; he was only scared. I breathed air into him until he coughed it back and whispered, “Are you real?” That was enough to exile me.

Now I lie on a beach of pebbles that don’t care.

“Hello?” a voice calls from the path.

A figure steps into the lantern glow—tall, careful, wrapped in sea-wind. Their light hits my face, and they flinch. “Shipwreck?” they ask.

“Something like that,” I say.

“I’ll get blankets,” they say, and mean it. “And tea.”

“Tea?” The word tastes like a star trying to behave.

They smile slightly. “You don’t have to drink it. But I’ll feel better making it. I’m Rowan,” they add, tilting their head. “Keeper of this light.”

“Lior.” The name leaves my mouth like a secret that wanted out.

“Okay, Lior.” They drape their coat over my shoulders without touching my skin. “Can you stand?”

“Eventually.”

We climb the path together, slow as a tide. Inside, the lighthouse hums: kettle, rope, the old pulse of salt. Rowan builds a nest from a wool blanket near the stove. “Sit,” they say. “The floor’s honest.”

It is. The kettle clicks. The room smells of smoke and herbs. Rowan sets a mug by my knees; steam climbs out like a gentle ghost.

“Thank you,” I say.

“You’re welcome.” They hesitate, then: “Do you need anything else?”

“Water. To touch.”

They fill a basin and set it beside me. I plunge my hands in. The skin between my fingers sighs.

Rowan watches me quietly. “I can call the coast guard in the morning,” they offer.

“No. There isn’t a boat to find.”

“Okay.” They sip their tea. “Then we’ll start with oatmeal. Oatmeal solves most shipwrecks.”

My mouth compromises between laughter and gratitude. “I haven’t been topside in a while,” I tell them. “Please forgive my mistakes.”

“Everyone’s a fish out of water here,” Rowan says. “The trick is to splash convincingly until someone brings a bucket.”

They lift their mug. “Welcome to the bucket.”

Days fold into one another like calm waves. Rowan checks the lens each morning while I stand by the window, whispering to the sea in a language it pretends not to remember. At noon, I collect new words: stovepipe, wick, fleece. By evening, the air smells of tea and woodsmoke, and my breathing almost sounds human.

Rowan plays checkers carved from driftwood. They offer to teach me chess, but switch games when I flinch at the knight’s crooked motion.

“How long have you kept the light?” I ask.

“Three years. I like jobs that don’t need weather commentary.”

I don’t laugh, but something unknots in my chest. “Before exile,” I say, “I was a singer. We marked borders in sound, kept storms from growing teeth. I did it well—until I didn’t.”

Rowan studies the board. “We are who we are, even when we’re somewhere else.”

When I sleep, the wind folds itself around the tower and hums a familiar key. I dream of currents and laws that don’t forgive. I wake to Rowan’s hand hovering near my shoulder, not touching—asking permission to exist beside me. I nod. They place their palm close, warmth speaking in place of words.

By late autumn, I’ve learned the rhythm of their world. Morning fog, the kettle’s whistle, gulls practicing gossip. Sometimes I find myself smiling for no reason other than existing hurts less than it used to.

Rowan meets me on the steps one afternoon, setting a brass compass between us. “Broken,” they say. “Always has been.”

“It’s not,” I answer. “It listens to a map that isn’t yours. The sea remembers where you’ve stood.”

They huff a laugh. “Maybe I like that honesty. It points its own north.”

At dusk, we walk the low tide. The sea glows faintly, phosphorescence tracing every movement like punctuation.

“You talk to it,” Rowan says.

“It listens when it wants to.” I touch the water; it retreats shyly. “But it doesn’t love us. It loves itself.”

“Do you love it?”

“Yes. And the quiet under your stairs, and the sound of your kettle when it decides to whistle.”

Their mouth softens. “Still waters run deep,” they murmur.

“Not always,” I say. “Sometimes stillness is just fear pretending to be peace.”

They hum. “I like your version better.”

The storm arrives without asking. The wind crashes into the tower like it’s been practicing. Rain finds every seam in the walls. Rowan ties down the shutters; I sit near the stove, basin in my lap, and hum a song for endurance.

When the lights go out, Rowan lights the lamp, its beam sweeping the dark like a heartbeat. “Tell me something true,” I say.

They stoke the fire. “The lens bends light into doing more with less.”

“Salmon remember the smell of their home stream,” I say. “They follow scent the way we follow voices.”

Rowan looks up. “So the sea’s calling you home.”

“It always is.”

Thunder answers before I can.

The door shifts in its frame. A shape of water steps through—tall, edgeless, carrying the sound of deep currents. My name ripples in its throat.

“Lior,” it says. “The tide forgives you if you come back.”

“I don’t need forgiveness.”

“You belong below.”

“I belong where I choose.”

The water swells. “You sing for the wrong throats.”

“I sing for the living,” I say, standing. “And I’m tired of mistaking stillness for depth.”

Lightning flashes; the shape falters, then collapses back into rain.

Rowan’s footsteps thump down from the stairwell. They skid to a stop, breathless, dripping. “Your door just… talked.”

“Yes,” I say. “And it was rude.”

They blink once, then nod. “We’ll have words with it later.”

We sit back to back by the stove, the air between us buzzing like held breath. The storm rages. Our quiet feels deliberate. When sleep finds us, it’s not mercy—it’s trust.

Morning is the color of exhaustion. The beach is rearranged, but the world still stands.

We walk to the waterline together. The tide shivers with something that might be curiosity.

“You wanted to talk?” I ask the sea.

A small wave folds forward. “You can come home.”

“I know.”

“You disobeyed the law.”

“I know. I’m done obeying fear.”

“Still waters run deep,” it says.

“Yes,” I answer. “But depth without choice is only shadow.”

The wave pauses. Then, like a laugh, it splashes my knees and retreats.

Rowan watches me. “Well,” they say. “That was dramatic.”

“They’ll gossip about it for centuries.”

“Let them.”

We pour tea into our palms and drink. The salt doesn’t ruin it.

“I can go with you to the next meeting,” Rowan says. “When the city talks about burying the tide pools again.”

“I’d like that.”

They smile. “We’ll say ‘still waters run deep’ and mean something better by it.”

Winter softens everything. The days shorten until they feel personal. Rowan writes letters to no one and burns them in a tin. I tend to the tide pools, freeing miniature forests from plastic. Our chores look like worship because they are.

At one of the city meetings, I stand behind a microphone that smells of nerves. “Still waters run deep,” I say. “But we keep damming what should flow.” People listen politely, not knowing they’re being forgiven for their smallness. That’s fine. Forgiveness is the ocean’s oldest language.

Back home, Rowan hands me soup. “You were perfect,” they say.

“I was inconvenient,” I correct.

“Same thing.”

Some nights we sit on the threshold, one of us inside, one outside. The line between worlds is just a seam we’ve agreed to share.

The sea glows sometimes, like it’s pleased to have been understood. I walk down to it and listen.

“Do you need us to ask again?” it murmurs.

“No,” I say. “Thank you.”

“You’re troublesome.”

“I intend to remain so.”

It sighs like surf over sand—a sound that means affection disguised as complaint.

When I climb back up, Rowan waits at the top step. “You stayed,” they whisper.

“I’ll keep staying.”

They lean into me, voice barely audible: “Still waters run deep, and so do you.”

“Then I’ll stop pretending to be shallow,” I say.

We stand there, salt drying on our faces, the light turning over the world again. The ocean doesn’t apologize for what it is, and neither do we.

Now the days stack quietly. I hum while Rowan trims the wick. They hum while I rinse the basin. Between us, the house learns a third song, something halfway between storm and stillness.

If I’m lucky, I’ll remain inconvenient for a long time. I’ll keep learning their names for wind and give them some of mine.

And when dawn peels back the gray to see what we’re doing, the lighthouse opens its honest eye again.

I stand on the threshold—breathing two kinds of world without asking either to forgive me—and think:

Still waters run deep. And I’ve finally found a place to swim.