Between us the water holds its cold green light and I feel the impulse to reach toward her. I feel it clearly and don’t follow it. She’s with Rex. I’m here to be better, not to take things I haven’t earned. But the impulse is named, at least, in that clear underwater light.
She blinks. Slow and deliberate. The aquatic version of clearing the throat, resetting the register.
Then she signals.
Ascent.Two fingers pointing up. Assessment complete.
I mirror the signal. We rise.
She surfaces three meters from me, pushes her mask up. For a moment there’s nothing on her face at all. Not the guarded professional look, not the sharp humor she uses like a blade. Just open water and a woman blinking in the late morning light, wet and briefly unguarded.
Then it closes over. Not unkindly. Just closed.
“Assessment complete,” she says, her voice slightly rough from the dive. “You move well. Comfortable at depth, clean signals, good spatial awareness.”
“Thank you.”
“Equipment check first thing tomorrow and you’re on the roster.” She tugs off one fin, then the other. Her hands are very steady. “Rex has the tour schedule. We’ve got a six-person group at ten, certification required, standard guided package. You’ll shadow for the first two, then I’ll assess your guiding.”
“Understood.”
She’s already swimming for the dock ladder, her tail receding into legs as she moves. The transition is so natural it takes barely a moment. She’s back to human form and up the ladder before I’ve reached it, wringing water from her braid.
I climb out. Water runs off me slower. The lake keeps its selkie kin a little longer, reluctant to release what it knows.
Cora is looking at the inlet. Not at me. At the water, at the place where we were suspended a few minutes ago.
“That cove,” I say, because the silence has to go somewhere. “Has it always been like that? The light?”
She’s quiet for a moment. “Since I’ve been here. The lake does something to the light in the northwest inlets. I don’t know why. I’ve never needed a reason.”
She picks up her mask and fins and goes back to the equipment shed. She doesn’t look back.
I stand on the dock with lake water drying on my arms and try to remember what I said to myself this morning.
Do the job. Do it well. That’s the whole of it.
Except the whole of it is considerably harder than it looked from a distance.
I’m going to need more coffee.
Rex arrives at nine with three coffees in a cardboard carrier and a canvas bag that smells like Mateo’s breakfast pastries. He hands me a coffee without ceremony and drops into one of the dock chairs, looking between me and the shed with focused incuriousness.
“Morning,” he says.
“Morning.”
“Dock check go well?”
“Assessment dive was solid. Good visibility.”
“Always is in the north cove, this time of year.” He looks at the water. “Cora’s a thorough assessor.”
“I noticed.”
A pause. He drinks his coffee. I drink mine. From inside the shed comes the sound of Cora reorganizing something with more energy than strictly necessary.
“I didn’t know you wereyouyesterday,” Rex says. Conversational. Not quite pointed. “When I told her, when she figured out you were you, she said to keep you on.” He glances at me. “She didn’t have to. Just so you know that.”