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

(39) Taiki: Farrow's Eyes

Underfarrow feels wrong with more than half its Kels missing. It's not a small fort, but I don't think I even realized how many people it could comfortably hold until they weren't there anymore. I felt that way already the first time I came back here, shortly after helping escort Dasha and her people from the stone forest to Roshaska. The feeling hasn't changed.

The guards who met me at the entrance release me to my own devices after pointing me towards the most likely place to find Finika. I know there are Kels in here who don't like me wandering around alone, but it's hard for them to say anything about it when I've been here before and am friendly with this place's only current leader. Everyone else smiles and greets me in a way I'm pretty sure is genuine.

When Vibi first gathered her diversion team, I thought it was coincidence that almost all the Kels left behind were those that supported Finika—and me and Yaz by extension. Now I think it might have been intentional, but that doesn't quite hold up. Vibi took everyone who would listen to her without question, and it's true that a lot of those Kels also don't respect Finika's authority. But the ones who don't like me wandering around alone are also Vibi-loyal, and it's hard to see why Vibi would leave one of her most dangerous fighters behind. Unless she needed someone both loyal and threatening to watch the fort in her absence. I don't like that possibility. I'm trying not to think about it.

Finika's not where the guards last saw him. That doesn't mean much, though; he and Yaz both have a strong tendency to get distracted, and tease each other about it all the time. I scout the room I was told to check—a little back pocket with a lot of fort records and planning scrolls—then make for the nearest storage room. There's broken writing-chalk set aside in the planning office, and I'd bet Fin left to get more.

The storage room proves my guess. Also the tendency to get distracted. It's been organized from top to bottom since I was last here, and the water is clouded like those shelves were only just rearranged. Finika startles at my laugh and whips around. He gives a guilty grin. "Taiki! Hi."

"Pronouns?"

"She for now."

Karu languages have an abundance of different ways of referring to people, and Karu people in general tend to be flexible on boundaries of identity. They have to be, when different, coexisting peoples on the reefs represent more variety of it than the rest of the ocean combined. I've met or heard of Karu peoples who start life as one biological sex and switch past a certain age, switch based on social dynamics, are multiple at once, or are neither and have children entirely on their own. And that's just a small cut of the full variety. In that context, it's impossible to be strict about personal identity, either. Finika's kind is pretty straightforward, biologically, but she's far from weird even among them.

"Did you find the chalk?" I ask.

"Oh! Thank you for reminding me." One tail-flick and she spins around, then pauses in the middle of the room. "Oh no."

"What?"

"Well, it was here." The indicated shelf is now stacked with seaweed scrolls. "But that was... a while ago."

I volunteer to help, and we search the room together. The chalk is in a logical new location with a stack of writing-stones and other mark-making utensils. Typical.

"Thank you," says Finika, when a new chalk-piece has been triumphantly selected. "Also, welcome back. How are things in..." she breaks off again, glancing over my shoulder. "We should probably talk in the Keep."

I copy the glance, but no one's watching. No one's in the hallway outside, either. Still, Finika remains more cautious than usual as we swim back to the office to drop off the chalk, then into the heart of Underfarrow and the stone cave where the fort's leaders tend to meet. Only when the door is shut behind us does Finika relax a little.