Tiviev Roasha wakes and there is sunlight dripping onto her. She wakes and for a moment she is transfixed, unable or simply unwilling to move. If she moves, she thinks, the sun will move too, and she couldn’t stand that. She remembers that for some reason she refused to go to her stateroom below deck the night before, opting instead to sleep on deck with a thin blanket between her and the elements. She is covered in dew, bits of foggy ocean air sticking to her skin and clothes. She is wet. She is cold. Her neck aches because she slept on it strangely. But there is sun dripping onto her, into her, running along her skin and pooling in the hollows of her eyes, the depression of her neck, all the rises and falls of her body.

If she is still, she thinks, the sunshine will sink in and evaporate her, and when her family finally wakes and comes on deck of the Roasha, she’ll be gone, and the day’s chores will go on without her. She’ll be there, the haze in the air, the fog, the dew. She’ll bead on the brows of her family as they gather to sing the morning tribute song, Dawn on the Ocean. Then, as the women prepare breakfast and the men ready the nets for the day’s first fishing, Tiviev will rise and disperse into the air above their heads.

She blinks and sits up, stretching and shivering. “Too early for such silly thoughts,” she rebukes herself aloud. The ocean slaps against the hull of the ship, as if in agreement.