He tilts his head, the motion slight but deliberate. "Those are not nearly the same."
"Well—They feel the same right now," I shoot back, my voice bouncing strangely in the confined space, too loud for our proximity.
He doesn't react as a betta-mer would. No offense. No sharp retort. He simply watches me, letting the silence expand around my defensiveness until it feels suffocating.
I rake a hand through my hair, pushing the crimson strands from my face. "You could have left," I say, because my thoughts keep circling back to it. "Twice. You could have let the ocean take me."
His gaze remains steady on mine. "Yes."
The blunt agreement is a physical blow. "Then... why?"
His eyes flick toward the opening of the pocket, where the water still pulses with uneven, dangerous rhythm. "Because you were too close."
I frown. "To the reef boundary?"
"To the edge," he corrects.
The words settle in my chest with an unfamiliar weight. I swallow, trying to keep my voice steady. "I didn't know it was going to collapse."
"I think you did," he says, and the certainty in his tone makes my spine stiffen. "You knew you shouldn't be out there. You stayed anyway."
I open my mouth to argue, to insist I was fixing knots, performing my duties. But I remember the moment at the boundary, the way my heart beat faster not with fear but with something else entirely.
I close my mouth.
He comes closer by a fraction. Not crowding, but narrowing the distance enough that my body registers the shift, the water between us growing heavier, denser.
"We don't do this," I say quietly.
His brow furrows. "Do what?"
"We don't decide to trust a predator," I answer, frustration threading tight through the word. "We don't linger near the trench. We don't follow currents that feel wrong. We don't let ourselves be curious about things that can eat us."
I hear the bitterness in my own voice. It sounds like an Elder, like Corin, like every voice that has ever told me to stay inside the lines.
His eyes sharpen. "And yet you are. Why?"
"Because," I start, then stop.
Because the city feels like a cage. Because I am tired of being an ornament. Because the knot in my chest finally loosened when I let the ocean pull me toward the dark.
He waits. He is not trying to corner me. He is simply letting the space exist, letting my silence fill it.
I exhale slowly. "Because the water felt wrong," I admit. "And everyone up there acts like if they don't name the danger, it can't find them."
His eyes darken. "They name it," he says. "Just not honestly."
"We call you shark-mers," I say, the words tasting heavy on my tongue. "The Basalt-Kin. I have never seen one of your kind, but we tell tales."
His jaw tightens. The smallest shift, but I catch it. The stillness in him goes colder, the air sharp with an unspoken history.
I instantly regret it.
I have thrown the city's fear at him like a weapon. But he doesn't lash out. He looks at me, dangerous and quiet.
"You don't call us shark-mer—the Basalt-Kin. What do you really call us?" he asks.
The question catches me off guard. "I..."
