[story] five days with the bride of the ocean

[ib_archive]

author: ruffwriter (ruffwriter)
email: ringhappy [at] comcast.net



She had never learned to swim. She couldn't stomach the idea. The night her mother took her down to the dock to teach her, the water was full of crabs - huge, hulking shapes that drifted through the water like ghosts in the moonlight. When she’d seen them, she’d refused to even dip a toe in the water. She'd been refusing ever since.

Now, years later, she realized that if she’d just gone in the water that night everthing would have been different. Because when it was time to choose the girl they could spare, even her own family had to admit that there was nothing more useless to a fishing village than a pretty girl who couldn't swim. Someone else would have been chosen to jump from the cliff overlooking the village.

The dock was somewhere below her now - raging waves had swallowed it minutes after the storm had begun, but every now and then it was visible, before the waves covered it again. The wind whipped her hair into her eyes, and she raked it aside, straining to see through the white foam. But it was no use. Maybe it would be better if she hit the dock, she told herself. Maybe it would even be quicker that way.

Someone called something to her that she couldn't hear over the roar of the storm, and she looked over her shoulder at the steadily gathering crowd. She made out her mother's face at the front, wearing a tight smile. She couldn't exactly tell if it was a smile meant to encourage her, or whether her mother’s sense of relief was more powerful than any sadness she might have felt.

She nodded towards them, though she didn't know why, and smoothed the wrinkles out of her kimono as she edged forward. It was the nicest one she owned, the kind she might have worn to meet her future husband.

Well, in a way, she was still doing that.

She eased off her shoes and laid them aside. Then, taking a long, slow breath, she plunged down into the waves below.

She noticed two things right away. The first was that she wasn't dead. The second was that she wasn't wet. She didn't know which one made her happier.

That happiness lasted for a surprisingly long while. There was enough to explore here to keep her busy for years, and her leash was longer than she would have thought. And her would-be husband more or less left her alone. In many ways it was better than what she could have expected from a real marriage.

The uneasiness she felt, though, reminded her of the way her cat used to cry at closed doors. He had the rest of the house - the rest of the village, even - to wander through, but he wanted the place that was off-limits.

So she asked one day. There was no harm in asking.

"What will it take," she said, "for you to let me go?"

She knew a deal would appeal to him. If nothing else, he was fair. But when she heard his condition, she shook her head.

"Did you really think I'd say anything but no?" she said.

Ever generous, he gave her another option.

"My weight in gold?" She smiled wryly. "I'm heavier than I look, you know."

So she stayed.

On the first day, fourteen-year-old Maris Jones twisted the wooden ring round and round on her finger and glared at the crashing waves.

Her father glanced back at her as he stood ankle-deep in the water, looking very skinny and pale in his blue swim trunks. "At least dip a toe in?" he called back to her.

Maris was about to answer, but she was drowned out as her three younger brothers went screaming and tearing down the shore and into the water. As they burst headlong into the waves, splattering salty water all around them, she simply gestured pointedly to her brothers and shook her head. She thought that was a good enough answer.

Her father looked as though he was going to say something else to try and convince her, but Maris' youngest brother Tommy hijacked him before he could say anything. She could see him give a little shrug as he turned away.

She shrugged right back. There wasn't any point to going in when all of them were around. Not even a minnow would stick around for all that splashing.

Instead, she started to wander down the shore. As usual, the beach that bordered their vacation home was empty and quiet: it was a little early for the summer rush to have started, and when it did, most of the tourists would stay in places like Ogunquit. York was just as pretty, but less crowded - it was why her parents had decided to buy a home here.

This wasn't the sort of beach people would flock to, anyway. Huge, jagged rocks surrounded it on every side, and visitors had to climb over them to reach the ocean. The tide touched those rocks when it was in, so the sand was never pale and sinking-soft like the nicer beaches. It was always wet, flat, and packed-in.

And besides, all the sane people chose much warmer places to vacation: Florida, California, or even Virginia Beach. Even in the summer, the water in Maine bordered freezing.

Maris had been walking for a while, twisting the wooden ring round and round on her finger, when she noticed that she had company after all. That wasn't rare; there was always a jogger with his dog, or an older couple walking hand in hand, nobody who would disturb the atmosphere too much.

But this girl was decidedly out of place. For one, she was wearing what looked like a Japanese kimono: dark red, with a gold pattern of dragonflies. She knelt on the sand, her calves folded under her thighs, and she was putting the finishing touches on the most elaborate sand castle Maris had ever seen. She didn't notice the approaching footsteps at first, too busy detailing the moat, but at length, she looked up. Maris suddenly realized that she was gaping at the girl, and she shut her mouth quickly.

"Is something wrong?" the girl asked.

"Um." Maris' face felt hot. She pointed to the kimono. "You're going to ruin that."

"You would think so," the girl laughed with a shake of her head, "but it doesn't seem to get ruined, no matter what I do to it. I guess it's tougher than it looks."

"Oh..." Feeling stupid, Maris decided to change the subject. "That's a... really big sandcastle.

"I have a lot of time on my hands," the girl said, as she fashioned a little flag out of a toothpick and a straw wrapper. She stuck it on top of the turret and nodded, looking satisfied with herself. "Tada."

The girl uncurled herself, stretching her legs out, and Maris could see that her left leg was wrapped in a thick rope of seaweed. Her skin was reddened around it, and Maris winced. It looked tight enough to be painful.

"Do you need help with that?" Maris asked as she pointed at the girl's leg. "I can get some scissors, or..."

"That's sweet of you, but no," the girl said, standing up. "It won't work." She brushed off the front and back of her kimono, but it didn't look the least bit wet or sandy. She adjusted the fall of her hair, like she was preparing for a picture, and she smiled that nice, easygoing smile at Maris. "Castle's all yours if you want to play with it."

And with a nod, she waded into the ocean and dove under the surface.

Maris shook her head as she watched her go. The tourists were getting stranger every year.

When the sun sank a little lower in the sky and her father and brothers went inside to argue over takeout menus, Maris went down to the dock, knelt down, and squinted into the water.

There wasn't much to see: no one was in the water now, but it would take a while for the fish to wander back to the place where her brothers had been splashing minutes before. Fish were smarter than people gave them credit for, she noted.

She twirled the carved ring round and round on her finger as a school of minnows swam by. It looked like that was the biggest thing she was going to get for now, but that was okay. It would be dark in a few hours, and the dock had spotlights that she could shine down on the water like a stage. She saw all kinds of fish at night.

She was mostly out on the dock to avoid the inevitable half-hour long discussion about what to eat for dinner.

Maris sighed and twirled her ring as snatches of the argument wafted from the house. Her mother was always useful at times like this. Mom was decisive - and besides, she and Maris had the same taste in food. The two of them, alone, would have been eating by now.

Too bad Mom wasn't 'the vacationing type.' Unless the vacation involved an excavation. Maris gave her ring another hard twist, hard enough that it slipped off her finger and into the water.

Her breath caught in her throat, but it fell to the surface with a little plink and floated there. She exhaled with a nervous laugh. Of course, she thought, wood.

She lay flat on the dock to reach down and grab it, but as soon as her hand drew near, the ring sank like a stone.

Maris stared at the spot where it had been, her eyes wide and her hand still outstretched. "Okay," she muttered, "that's not natural."

She leaned over further and peered into the water. A fish could have come along and swallowed it, but she didn't see one anywhere. It wasn't very deep - couldn't be more than eleven or twelve feet - and she could almost see all the way to the bottom. No fish. No ring, even. Nothing but minnows.

It was possible that the fish swam away too fast for her to see, but - No, she thought, it definitely sank. It might have defied the laws of nature, but that was what she had seen.

Maris stood and glanced back towards the beach house at her father, who was standing by the window. She hovered there as she considered calling out to him, but one look at the sky convinced her otherwise. The sun had already sunk below the horizon, but there was still enough light for her to look around if she dove in now. There wouldn't be for much longer, and the currents would have carried the ring away by sunrise.

She gritted her teeth as she pulled her goggles out of her beach bag. No choice, then.

Thankfully, she didn't accidentally kick any of the barnacle-encrusted pillars when her dive turned into a belly flop, as she had the last time she’d tried diving from the dock. Her brothers thought it was pretty hilarious that an aspiring marine biologist was such an awkward swimmer, but Maris always figured that the skill was something she'd grow into. Like social grace, an aptitude for math, or slightly longer legs.

She could see the ocean floor very clearly now through her goggles, but she still didn't see the ring. She looked in the water around her and up to the surface, just to make sure it hadn't started floating again, but didn’t see it there, either. Just as she was about to swim up for air, Maris heard something under the dock - a noise that sounded just like someone clearing their throat.

When she turned, the sandcastle girl was floating there under the dock, her dark hair billowing around her and her red and gold kimono looking even more lustrous than it had on land. With a wry expression on her face, the sandcastle girl held up a hand, Maris' ring pinched between her thumb and forefinger, and said, as clearly as if they were standing on the beach:

"Where did you get this?"

Maris discovered that there were certain situations where she could swim pretty fast, after all.

On the second day, the sandcastle girl was waiting for Maris at the dock.

Maris, sleep-deprived and still shaken, froze. She'd been lying awake all night staring at her window, waiting for the sandcastle girl to crawl through like the monster in a bad horror movie. By morning, she had managed to convince herself that she'd hallucinated the whole thing. But there the girl was, signaling Maris with a dainty little wave like she was inviting her over for coffee and finger-sandwiches.

The way Maris saw it, she had two options: she could run away screaming, or she could brave this conversation in the name of science. It came as no surprise to her which option she picked.

"Are you some sort of... fish-person?" she demanded.

The sandcastle girl blinked. "Eh?"

"Don't get me wrong," she babbled. "I don't believe in mermaids. But I'm open to the possibility of a fish/human hybrid-"

"I'm sure we both have lots of questions," sandcastle girl said with that same wry smile. "Let's start with mine." She held up Maris' ring. "Where did you get this?"

"Why, do you want one?" Maris cringed as soon as the words were out of her mouth. She might as well have said 'I know you are, but what am I?'

The girl just kept watching her, narrowing her eyebrows a fraction. Maris got the picture. It was incredible: this girl couldn't be much older than her, but she was in complete control of the conversation. "It's from my mom," she said.

"And where did your mother get it?" the girl asked.

"On a research trip," Maris said. When the girl continued to stare, she added, "In Japan."

"Japan," she repeated with a curt nod. "In a little fishing village, maybe?"

"I... yeah, Mom said that's probably what it used to be," Maris said slowly. At the words 'used to be,' something in the girl's expression shifted, but she didn't say anything. "How did you-"

"Your mom," the girl interrupted. "Did she take anything else from that village?"

Yes. A whole box of things: wooden jewelry, broken dishes, little unidentifiable pieces of things that were lying around. "A couple things," was all she said. "Mom gave them to me."

"And do you have those things with you?" the sandcastle girl pressed.

Maris took them everywhere she went. They were sitting under the bed in the cottage right now. "No," she said. "They're in the attic at home."

"Mmm." The sandcastle girl hummed as she nodded, almost to herself, before smiling at Maris. "Just one more question, then." She tossed the ring across the dock, and Maris scrambled to catch it. "Do you know what's carved on the side of this ring?"

Maris glanced down at the barely visible Chinese characters on the side of the ring, and shook her head 'no.' "Mom says it's probably someone's name."

"Smart," the girl said approvingly. A long pause, then she said, "My cousin used to carve things out of driftwood in her free time. Toys, jewelry, anything she could make without accidentally cutting a finger off. It started to catch on after a while - there were a lot of slow days when the water got cold - and she got a little competitive. Wanted to make sure everyone knew it was her idea. So she carved her family name into everything she made. 'Minamoto.'" She drew the characters in the air with her finger. "This one's too recent to be hers, though. I imagine she taught her kids, and they taught theirs, and so on-"

"Nice try," Maris scoffed. "This ring is hundreds of years old. You're what, fifteen?"

"Sixteen," she corrected, without even looking at Maris. She was fiddling with the piece of seaweed still tied around her leg.

"Right. So unless you've got an eight hundred year-old cousin out there-"

"I said I was sixteen," the girl said with a sigh, "not that that was how long I'd been alive. There's a difference."

"... n-no, there isn't, actually," Maris stammered. She was beginning to run out of retorts. "Look, A+ for effort and all, but you can't have my ring."

"I understand your reluctance," the sandcastle girl said, "but I need it more than you do."

"Great. Can't wait to hear this one," Maris said.

"I need it to get a divorce. From the ocean." When Maris just stared, the girl smiled. "Don't you want an explanation for that, too?"

"Nope." Maris shook her head. "I've already pretty much made up my mind that you're crazy."

"Fair enough." She nodded. "How can I change your mind?"

Maris sucked on her bottom lip as she tried to think of the most impossible thing that would come to mind. After a moment, she snapped her fingers. "Ceratiidae. The deep sea anglerfish," she announced. "It's a fish that lives on the ocean floor and uses a lure on its head to catch prey-"

"I know what an anglerfish is," the girl said.

"Good," Maris said with a smirk. "Then if you're married to the ocean, you shouldn't have any trouble getting me one." Maris expected the girl to come up with some other colorful excuse as to why she couldn't, but the girl didn't look panicked at all. She answered without hesitation.

"Done," she declared, swinging her feet off the dock and into the water. She began to push herself in, but she stopped. "Your name?"

"Huh?"

"Are you going to introduce yourself?" the girl asked. "That's what's done in polite circles."

"Give me yours first." Maris didn't feel too bad for being childish this time.

"Aone." She looked over her shoulder and smiled.

"... Maris," she grumbled.

"Maris. Latin for 'of the sea.' That's ironic." Aone giggled. "You swim like a guppy without fins."

Before Maris could retort, she slid into the water and out of sight.

Flushed red with annoyance, Maris sat crosslegged on the dock, waiting for Aone to surface and admit that she couldn't get an anglerfish after all. But the only movement in the water was the incoming tide. Aone didn't return to the dock - and from what Maris could see, she didn't come to shore on the beach, either.

The annoyance started to drain away, and she nervously called out, "You can't swim to the bottom of the ocean, you know!"

But Aone didn't answer that, either.

By the third day, Maris was convinced that she'd accidentally killed someone.

Her father teased her nonstop for the increased amount of time she spent by the dock - "Are you looking for a Great White out there?" - but she couldn't tell him what had happened. She still didn't know what had happened herself. It was possible that Aone was still messing with her.

But it just seemed more possible that, in her excitement to prove Aone wrong, she'd told some delusional girl to swim to the bottom of the ocean. Maris shared her mother's dislike for 'Eurocentric religious traditions,' but even she was willing to pray for this: Please don't let her have tried it.

When she saw Aone later that afternoon sunning herself on the dock as if nothing had happened, Maris could have cried with relief. She ran towards her, ready to chew her out, but the thing in Aone's hands stopped her short.

"One anglerfish, as ordered," Aone declared, holding up a discarded, water-filled plastic bag occupied by the most horrific fish Maris had ever seen. "Sorry it took so long - it's a little dark down there. Hard to see. Now, were you planning on naming him? Because if so, I'm rather partial to 'Chester.' Or maybe 'Timothy,' I can't decide."

When Maris could only stare at her, her mouth gaping open in a very similar manner to the anglerfish, Aone grinned. "I think you'll be wanting that explanation now."

Maris nodded dumbly.

Aone patted the spot next to her, but Maris sat as far away from her as possible. She was having flashbacks to a particularly terrible Lifetime movie she'd watched one day when she was bored, about a serial killer who tethered his victims to the bottom of a lake and called them his 'underwater garden.' Except that serial killer didn't claim to be married to the lake, so she decided that this was definitely worse.

"That fishing village - the one your mother talked about - that's where I'm from," Aone said. "And as you can imagine, our whole life was the ocean. It had as many moods as any person I've ever met, and it seemed to breathe every time the waves rolled in. It controlled whether we ate or starved, and sometimes it even controlled whether we lived or died. It wasn't such a stretch to imagine that it was a living thing, watching us." She smiled. "Well, I never believed that. Too literal-minded, maybe."

Maris nodded.

"When we had those bad days, people would wonder, what're we doing wrong? How can we fix it?" Aone continued. "And eventually they decided that it was because we didn't do anything but take. We took fish, we took seaweed, we took shipwrecked vessels to search for anything of use, but we never gave anything to the ocean. So we started offering tribute. Little things. Nothing important.

"But when a storm hit, they knew that wasn't enough. They started looking for something bigger: a pretty girl that they could spare." Aone shrugged. "And I couldn't swim. Not a good thing in my village."

Maris' stomach flip-flopped. "They drowned you?"

"I jumped into the water on my own," Aone said. "I didn't believe, remember? I thought we were all going to be dead soon anyway, so why not let them hope for a few minutes?" She laughed. "But then it turned out I was wrong, of course."

Maris must have looked horrified, because Aone said, "Oh, don't get me wrong, it was good for a while. A long time, actually. But it gets old. It's like I'm caught in that moment before I hit the water. Never aging, never being hungry or thirsty... and besides, I hate crabs. I don't really love sharing a home with them."

"So you want to leave," Maris said.

"Would that it were that easy." Aone splashed her seaweed-bound leg across the surface of the water. "He's very possessive of what's given to him willingly - and even what isn't. But he was fair. He gave me a choice. I could stay with him, or I could let him take what he originally wanted: my village." She paused, as if to let that sink in, and then added, "Or I could give him my weight in gold."

"... then why don't you do that?" Maris asked. "You could find a pirate ship, or sunken treasure, or-"

"False advertising. I've never found more than one or two doubloons on those things," Aone said. "And I'm heavier than I look."

"So that's why you want my ring?" Maris clutched it tighter.

"He recognized where it was from as soon as you dropped it in," she said. Her smile turned apologetic. "Before I returned it to you, I tried to trade with him. He said it wouldn't be enough. It's a shame you don't have that 'box of things' with you."

Maris felt a squirm of guilt, but remembering the care with which her mother had handed her that box, she only said, "Yeah, but how do you know it'd be enough? It's just a couple of things. He might take it and not let you go anyway."

"Mm." Aone stared into the water. "You're probably right."

"... sorry. I wish there was something else I could do." Maris slipped the ring back onto her finger.

"Hmmm." Aone tilted her head. "Perhaps there's a little favor I could do for you. An apology for ruining your vacation, if you will."

"What's that?" Maris asked, instantly wary.

"If you meet me here on the dock tomorrow, I'll tell you. First, I have to return Chester. Or Timothy." She wiggled the plastic bag. "Unless you want to keep him?"

"... nah." She laughed weakly. "Pass."

On the fourth day, when Maris came to the dock, Aone sprang out of the water, took her by the arms, and pulled her in.

Once the shock of the cold water wore off, Maris had just enough time to think that Aone had figured out her lie, that she was going to drown her as revenge, before she flailed to the surface. Aone didn't look angry, though. She was watching Maris and giggling.

"Surprise?" she said. Aone didn't look like she was having any trouble keeping her head above water. She bobbed on the surface as if she was weightless.

Maris latched onto Aone's shoulders to keep herself afloat. "This is your favor?" she gasped.

"Absolutely," Aone said. "And you're welcome. If I hadn't done this, you would have spent your entire vacation on that dock, right? An aspiring marine biologist should be comfortable in the water."

Maris blinked. "How did you-"

"Know that you want to be a marine biologist?" she laughed. "Please. 'Bring me an anglerfish?' Most people would just ask me to breathe underwater or something."

"Oh." Maris felt herself getting hot despite the chill of the water. "I guess that makes more sense."

She twitched as she felt something disturb the water around them, brushing against her legs, and Aone looked down. "Looks like we made a friend."

"Where?" Maris nearly submerged herself as she tried to find the fish. "Is it a striped bass? Because I thought I saw some last night-"

"You know," Aone said, "if you're looking for interesting fish, the coast of Maine probably isn't the best place to be." She brightened. "What about Australia?"

"Yeah, right," Maris snorted, still clinging to Aone. "Dad has a hard enough time keeping track of my brothers here, let alone in Australia."

"Your mother wouldn't come?" asked Aone.

"She's not here now," Maris said. "She's in South Korea."

"Ah, that's right," Aone said. "You mentioned that she was on some kind of research trip in Japan?"

"She's an archaeologist," Maris said. "Specializing in East Asia. She doesn't really like vacations where she can't work."

"I see..." Aone went quiet for a little while, before asking, "What are you doing, exactly?"

"Huh?"

"You're clinging to me like you're a shipwreck survivor and I'm your life raft," Aone said. "Don't you know how to tread water?"

"So what if I don't?" Aone was looking at Maris as if she were the most piteous thing she'd ever seen. Maris sulked, "I never had official swimming lessons, okay?"

"Neither did I," Aone pointed out. "It's simple. A slow scissor-kick, like this." She demonstrated. "If I can do it in a kimono, you can do it in a swimsuit."

"Easy for you to say," Maris grumbled. "You're not even wet."

"Yes, well." Aone grinned. "I never said this thing didn't come with perks." She spoke the words in the same light, flippant tone she'd been using since Maris met her, but for some reason, this time it stung. Aone must have caught the look on Maris' face, because she tilted her head to one side and asked, "What?"

"I don't know how you can be so calm about it," Maris said, biting her lip. "What your family did to you... aren't you angry?"

"For a while," she admitted, but she was still smiling. "But I'm the sort of person who takes things in stride. Why else would I give myself over to something I didn't even believe in?"

"Yeah, but-"

"Maris." Aone squeezed her arm. "If you weren't able to go to the ocean and watch the fish on these family vacations of yours - say, if you went to your mom's dig site in South Korea instead of the beach - would you still want to go?"

"... no," Maris mumbled, "probably not."

"So you have that in common," Aone said. "It's not a trait of hers you particularly like, but you inherited it all the same. I have to look at it that way. Even if what my family did to me was selfish, I might be capable of that, too." She shrugged. "I still don't like it. But at least I understand it a little more."

She paused. "Did your mother tell you what happened? To that village, I mean. If it was another storm, I'd probably have heard by now."

"Well, she didn't know for sure," Maris said. "But she said it looked like they just abandoned it, hundreds of years ago. An earthquake destroyed most of the houses later, but by then, they were all gone."

"Abandoned it, huh?" Aone looked pensive. "Maybe the fish stopped coming."

Maris could picture Aone's little fishing village, and in her mind's eye, it was a gray, cold-looking place, with sand as dark and flat as their beach. She pictured the ocean's currents pulling the fish away from the shores, uprooting the seaweed and sweeping it someplace deep and far away.

In her mind, it was their punishment: the ocean taking retribution for his bride. But Maris couldn't say if he really loved Aone like that. Maris didn't know if he was even aware of who she was beyond the gift that was given to him. She didn't even know if Aone knew that much.

Aone must have guessed what she was thinking, because she suddenly said, "We're going under for a minute. Hold your breath."

Maris obliged, and let herself sink into the water with Aone. She stayed there for a beat, waiting, but after a moment, Aone pulled her up again.

"Did you hear that?" Aone asked.

"What?" Maris frowned. "I didn't hear anything."

"You know that sort of dull roar you hear underwater? Like the kind your muscles make when you clasp your hands over your ears." Aone waited for Maris' nod. "That's his voice."

Maris felt a chill that wasn't from the water, but she tried to laugh. "If that's all it is, how do you know he's a he?"

"Huh." Aone pursed her lips. "You're right. I don't really know."

"Mmm." Maris tried treading water as Aone demonstrated: a slow scissor-kick, back and forth. The water swished between her legs. "What do you think would happen if he let you go?"

"No idea." Aone gently pried Maris' hands from her shoulders and swam backwards. When Maris stayed afloat on her own power, she offered an approving nod. "But it would be silly of me to be afraid of that, of all things."

Maris was awake late into the night, sitting cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom and looking through the box of relics from Aone's village.

She pulled each item out of the box and held it up to let it catch the purple and red glow of her lava lamp nightlight, then carefully set it aside on the floor.

All of our major finds went to the museum, of course, her mother had said as she showed her each item. But I thought you might be interested in these. She held up the cracked edge of a plate and smiled at it. Look how the ocean shaped it throughout the years. It looks intentional, doesn't it?

Maris twirled the wooden ring round and round on her finger as she stared at the collection scattered across her floor. The 'major finds' were in a museum. The structures themselves were sunken into the sand like gravestones. That box of bits and pieces was the only proof left that Aone's village had existed.

She reached up onto her bedside table to pick up her cell phone and international calling card. She dialed the number on the card, turned it over, and then dialed the second number that had been handwritten on the back with a steady, almost clinical hand.

The phone rang twice before her mother picked up. "Hello?"

"Hey, Mom," Maris said. "Are you busy?"

"No, not at the moment," her mother said. Maris smiled. Liar. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah." Maris slipped the ring off her finger and placed it in the bottom of the box. "I just wanted to talk for a bit, that's all."

On the fifth day, before anyone else was awake, Maris went down to the dock with the box pressed against her chest.

Aone was in the water at the end of the dock, her eyes fixed on the sun rising over the water. When she heard Maris approaching, she turned her head, and as she caught sight of the box, Maris blurted out, "I lied to you."

"I would have been okay with that." Aone's smile seemed hesitant this time.

"Yeah, well..." Maris said as she gripped the box tightly with both hands. "You're allowed to get your way once in a while."

She gritted her teeth as she upended the box into the water, and she and Aone watched as everything drifted to the bottom. As it did before, the ring floated on the surface for a few seconds before sinking like a stone.

The next thing to sink was Aone.

"Aone!" Maris hit the dock on her hands and knees, trying to see to the bottom in the dim light. She couldn't see Aone anywhere, and even as she squinted into the water, she didn't see any movement there at all. Breathing fast, she started to unzip her sweatshirt so that nothing would hinder her when she dove in, but as she moved to climb into the water, someone broke the surface, splashing water into Maris' face.

Maris blinked hard, ignoring the sting of the salt, and took the outstretched hand. She didn't know how she managed to pull the taller girl up, but in the next moment, Aone was on the dock, coughing and soaking wet. She dragged her wet hair away from her face, and her eyes widened as she got a good look at herself.

"I guess it got ruined after all," she said, touching her kimono.

Maris started forward, ready to ask what happened, but Aone grabbed her hand, and she froze. She looked different, somehow. It wasn't just that she was wet. In the water, when she swam, she glided effortlessly. But every move she made seemed heavy now. The seaweed was gone from her leg, but there was a twisted red mark where it had been.

Aone pressed something into Maris' hand, and when she opened her palm, she saw the wooden ring. She opened her mouth to protest, but Aone pressed a finger against Maris' lips to silence her.

"His parting gift," Aone said. And unless Maris was imagining things, there was a hint of longing in the words.

But when Maris slipped the ring onto her finger, Aone's smile was as bright as ever.

the end